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The best ENGINEERED console of each generation
- Thread starter Sid Of Bee
- Start date
- Social Opinion Hardware
01011001
Member
Dreamcast? ehhh, it's a hard choice between that and the GameCube. Xbox and PS2 are out of the question lol
for me the GameCube wins because it has less hardware issues. while the Dreamcast basically guaranteed breaks at some point due to a known hardware issue and you are forced to repair it... it's not a hard repair but annoying
also I think the controller is part of the equation and the DC controller was just stuck in the past and Sega completely ignored emerging trends like dual analog sticks
thicc_girls_are_teh_best
Gold Member
Wow I had completely forgotten about that! Guess they had to save costs somewhere...maybe should've ditched some of the USB ports instead. Did they try doing scaling via software instead?
As for Dreamcast and Gamecube, yeah Gamecube beats it out IMO. Dreamcast did have SOME technical advantages over PS2, but not in most of the bigger areas, and it does seem like a regular thing to need to replace the disc drives in them. Plus, the issues with the controller, despite it being pretty forward-thinking with the VMU.
They're both fantastic systems tho.
Futaleufu
Member
The SNES is easily the worst designed of that generation, it was already underpowered when it released and, while acceptable back then, the audio is so compressed it's irritating
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Sid Of Bee
Member
Underpowered? I find that a strange take considering it's end of life span games in which a lot of them didn't even utilize special chips in the cartridges. Graphically could push more sprites and obviously more colors than the Genesis. Even games like Super Ghost and Goblins which had slow down have been actually fixed by today's community to run faster using the CPU more efficiently. I agree that the CPU was underpowered but the system as a whole was more about the sum of its parts and a lot of its hardware capabilities were offset by special chips in the system. So on the CPU side I do understand where you're coming from. I also think it's a little overstated because that CPU just need to be utilized more efficiently even though it ran slow based on clock speed. It also came to down to the fact that early games used slow ROM in the cartridges rather than the later and slightly more expensive, fast ROM which helped immensely.
I know it wasn't the most powerful, but considering it's price and the fact that it was able to keep up early in the 32-bit generation shows to me that the system was capable of punching above its weight and well designed as well as being a pinnacle of 2D gaming even today.
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Sid Of Bee
Member
Futaleufu
Member
-The TG16 runs shmups better than the SNES.
-In theory the SNES could push more sprites than the Genesis but it had a lot of constraints regarding sprite size, while the Genesis was more versatile and could optimize sprite use better than SNES
-The pinnacle of 2D gaming is the Neo Geo.
Sid Of Bee
Member
Neo Geo is definitely the most powerful and long lasting... But due to its arcade roots, it didn't have a varied library nor a lot of developers that focused on it. It was $699 for the AES and $200 for every cartridge. If Sega or Nintendo wanted to charge those prices, I'm sure they could have competed, particularly Sega who had a strong arcade division.
I have all of these systems and in particular the Super Nintendo holds up very well, particularly for the games of its time. I think the Genesis has amazing independent development these days, but based on the output back then, even though there's some amazing Genesis games, usually the ports of the Super Nintendo version hold up better, at least the ones I'm playing.
Also, it's not just about the CPU. The Super Nintendo controller is so much better than anything else at that time and it took a few years for Sega to release their six button.
It's a very interesting generation to say the least.
RetroAV
Member
Yeah, the Neo Geo was almost TOO GOOD! But the price killed it...just wish it would have received more 3rd party support from the likes of Capcom, Konami, Namco, etc. It would have been great to see more genres as well.
RetroAV
Member
I think ports being better on one versus the other have more to do with which one was the lead platform, the resources assigned, and the overall influence Nintendo held at the time. In some instances, Sega had to license and port 3rd party games themselves to get it on their hardware because developers feared being punished by Nintendo!
Nowadays, seeing the community go back and fix some of the issues that plagued these Genesis releases of 3rd party games is proof enough that the developers should have done better because they could have.
Also, I too have all these systems and if you hook them up to decent enough speakers and run them through RGB, you'll start to notice the SNES's low-quality sampled audio and lower resolution when compared to the Genesis. Now, the one area you won't get push back from me is the actual games themselves! SNES genuinely does have some of the greatest of all time.
Sid Of Bee
Member
I agree with all you are saying. Although all the sounds on the SNES are muffled compared to the Genesis, it definitely did voices a lot better and certain sounds it could replicate which often made it have music and sound that more replicated the arcade versions and such. The Genesis definitely had a much more distinct cleaner sound but was limited. Also, the Genesis had terrible colors. That was it's greatest weakness in my opinion. But now that I'm kind of thinking about the time frame that they were released and the real capabilities, disregarding the games, the Genesis was a really revolutionary piece of kit. The three button controller was just a sign of the time.
The comparison between the SNES and Genesis is highly debatable and why is in my opinion, the greatest console war of all time.
Maybe I'll give this one a tie.
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01011001
Member
some games scaled using software somw didn't.
you could see it at the back of the game cases in the supported resolutions.
if 1080p was supported then it meant it scaled up to 1080p (or even ran at 1080p... but I mean that's like 3 games or something)
if only 720p was on the back, then if you had a 1080p screen the TV needed to scale a 720p image
but even on an "HD Ready" TV scaling was inevitable usually. because HD Ready TVs did 99% of the time not have an actual 1280x720 screen but actually a 1366x768 screen. meaning even on an HD ready screen a PS3 game would need to be scaled up by the TV, which was really suboptimal with the really low quality upscaling these TVs did.
the 360 had various resolution scaling options in the OS. so you could have 720p, 768p, 1080i, 1080p and it would all be scaled by the console so that the TV has to do nothing to the image.
over VGA it also supported various PC resolutions like 1680x1050, you would of course have black bars on the top and bottom with that since it's a 16x10 resolution but the system still scaled and put out a great image even with those more rare resolutions
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sncvsrtoip
Gold Member
ps1, ps2, x360, ps4, xsx
RetroAV
Member
On that, we can agree.
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01011001
Member
the big issue the MegaDrive has in comparison to the SNES is that it was clearly designed to compete against the NES not against the SNES. which is also why it has the same amount of buttons on the controller as the NES.
once the SNES came out and basically revolutionised the console controller layout which we STILL USE TO THIS DAY, the MegaDrive felt super outdated, even the 6 Button controller couldn't do much about that, especially since it was an optional peripheral not something that came with the system.
and once more and more Arcade ports came to home systems the MegaDrive simply could not keep up anymore.
Mortal Kombat 2 was one of those games that simply looked so much worse with tons of missing background details and animation frames.
something like Street Fighter Alpha 2 would have been basically impossible to port to the MegaDrive and even pushed it hard with the SNES and barely ran.
I would absolutely say the SNES was the better generational upgrade from the NES and Master System.
the Mega Drive feels like it was released to early and wasn't even remotely ambitious enough.
Nintendo absolutely killed it with the hardware features like Mode 7 that left everything on MegaDrive in the dust with games like F-Zero... THAT was a generational jump, not just slightly higher res and a bit more colors.
convincing looking 3D gameplay was something the MegaDrive simply could not do without expensive chips in the cartridge, while the SNES could do it out of the box and at very high speed as well
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Physiognomonics
Member
Master System should be compared with NES. In japan it released 2 years later but only one year later in US. Anyways Master System is way superior to NES. I love and prefer the NES games but I wished the NES had Sega MS hardware.
Switch is the worst hardware Nintendo released. It's basically a mere Nvidia tablet with the worst joypads ever (laggy, unreliable, uncomfortable) and with a dock that (similar to 3DS before) will scratch the screen each times you use it. It's designed for casuals and children, people that don't need a confortable and reliable controller (and don't care if the screen is scratched). It's really sad because the games are awesome.
Switch is the worst hardware Nintendo released. It's basically a mere Nvidia tablet with the worst joypads ever (laggy, unreliable, uncomfortable) and with a dock that (similar to 3DS before) will scratch the screen each times you use it. It's designed for casuals and children, people that don't need a confortable and reliable controller (and don't care if the screen is scratched). It's really sad because the games are awesome.
Sid Of Bee
Member
2 years back then was a long time and Sega actually released a console on the same day as the Famicom known as the SG1000. So how do we resolve that they released two consoles in the same generation? Seems unfair.
I completely disagree with you about the Switch.
RetroAV
Member
This is irrelevant to me and just proves the greatness of the Genesis hardware even further.
If you truly felt that way...why not just go to the store and buy a $20 6-button controller? Problem solved. Though I did wish it had shoulder buttons along with the 6-button layout. This is exactly what Sega went ahead and did with Saturn.
Do you think that had something to do with the Genesis itself or developer time/resources/management? The reason I ask is...how do you explain MK3?
SFA 2 never showed up on the Genesis because Sega had already moved on to Saturn, not because it was "impossible".
Okay, that's bait.
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Romulus
Member
This is sort of intentionally downplaying the snes controller significance. Even if you did buy a 6 button controller, most games weren't built for that many inputs. The snes default 4 button + shoulder buttons was simply next generation compared to mega drive because games were built from the ground up to take advantage of it.
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RetroAV
Member
Right, just like the SNES games were built to take advantage of the SNES layout, Genesis games were built to take advantage of their layouts as well. SNES had the more forward-thinking controller, but if 3 buttons bothered you, there was a solution.
Romulus
Member
Nothing wrong with 3 buttons or 1 button if that's the design choice, but at that time it was already becoming very limited for many games. And again not many games took advantage of the mega drive alternatives, so devs were forced to imagine within those limited parameters because you couldn't assume a gamer had the upgrade controller.
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NotMyProblemAnymoreCunt
Member
NES
SNES
PlayStation
GameCube
PlayStation 3
PlayStation 4
Xbox Series X
SNES
PlayStation
GameCube
PlayStation 3
PlayStation 4
Xbox Series X
Andodalf
Member
It was based off a gamble that 8gb of gddr5 would be too expensive for consoles. And it was until very late in the game. If the Xbox had 8gb of Ram to PSs 4, that gen looks completely different. They read the tea leaves wrong, and SRAM proved far more costly than Gddr5As a follow up to X360 being the best, the Xbox One is probably the worst designed console of all time.
They wasted this much of their die for SRAM. this thing could have been a 30 core GPU monster. They did this so they could cheap out on DDR3. Which I think was done during the time when DDR3 ram was being supply squeezed to inflate prices so they didn't even reap the benefits of cheaper memory. In the end the system's dimensions we're huge, the console was significantly less powerful than the PS4, yet somehow more expensive, had poor launch titles, a very poorly coordinated worldwide launch, and initially designed to have disc-based DRM. Even the name sucked Xbone.
01011001
Member
As a follow up to X360 being the best, the Xbox One is probably the worst designed console of all time.
They wasted this much of their die for SRAM. this thing could have been a 30 core GPU monster. They did this so they could cheap out on DDR3. Which I think was done during the time when DDR3 ram was being supply squeezed to inflate prices so they didn't even reap the benefits of cheaper memory. In the end the system's dimensions we're huge, the console was significantly less powerful than the PS4, yet somehow more expensive, had poor launch titles, a very poorly coordinated worldwide launch, and initially designed to have disc-based DRM. Even the name sucked Xbone.
in hindsight the XBox One was a shitty system for sure. but I get why they did it.
before the launch of both consoles, it was basically a known fact that the PS4 will have 4GB of GDDR5 RAM, the whole system was leaked online and Developers were breefed by that point. Microsoft saw an opportunity to have way more ram with relatively good transfer speeds using an eSRAM buffer.
but Sony pulled an almost last minute joker out of their sleeves by doubling their GDDR5 RAM pool ahead of launch, less than a year out. not even all of their first party studios knew. most of them learned about the 8GB at the same time as the public did.
had the PS4 only had 4GB of RAM, and the One had 8GB, you would have had a very interesting generation I bet. we would have had a battle of render resolution vs. texture resolution and geometry density.
the PS4 pushing more pixels while the Xbox One would push more VRAM intensive effects and textures.
Not only that, their OS would have been severely RAM limited. in the final system specs both consoles only give games about 5GB or ram to use... meaning both consoles reserve 3GB of RAM for the System OS/features.
Sony with 4GB of GDDR5 would have had the choose between having the same OS reserves as the Xbox One has and only a shockingly small 1GB or ram for the Games.
or to completely slim down the OS and limit the features possible with it and give the games a bit more (maybe 2GB)
basically, Sony pulled a combo breaker and fucked them with that surprise upgrade in RAM.
if the final system specs would have been 1.31TF + 8GB DDR3 vs 1.84TF + 4GB GDDR5 it would not have been as black and white as it was. Just imaging if the PS4 only gave developers 1GB or RAM for games... even 2 would have been ridiculously low in hindsight... while the Xbox One had 5GB available for games
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Chris_Rivera
Member
The current gen console hardware (and maybe last gen too) are so similar it isn’t really worth quantifying, outside of which is a personal favorite.
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01011001
Member
I give it to the Series X because it is WAAAAAAY more compact than the PS5 while having basically the same performance, give or take.
the PS5 is the biggest damn console I've ever had... and it's literally sitting next to my og Xbox which it makes look small by comparison
MikeM
Member
PS5 is not loud. Mine is basically as silent as my Series X.
01011001
Member
mine is a tad louder than my Series X... but not by much. basically the SX is completely silent and the PS5 is slightly audible during gameplay
Chris_Rivera
Member
True. But you know Sony wants to sell a slim model before this gen is out. I’m sure the size could have been trimmed if that was the goal.I give it to the Series X because it is WAAAAAAY more compact than the PS5 while having basically the same performance, give or take.
the PS5 is the biggest damn console I've ever had... and it's literally sitting next to my og Xbox which it makes look small by comparison
01011001
Member
well Slim models are inevitable... I wonder how they will look for both Series X and PS5
I'm hoping the Series X slim will be a perfect cube!
the Series S could be the most interesting one... because like 4 years down the line the chips could be shrunken down enough to make that thing either ridiculously tiny, or straight-up release a Handheld variant
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Sosokrates
Report me if I continue to console war
5th
N64 - no moving parts, silent.
6th
Gamcube - small, cute, well designed
7th
Draw, they both had pretty bad launch units and the revision were about equal.
8th
Xbox one - people gave it a lot of shit because it was big, but its not that big in a entertainment unit, its more astheticaly designed, its minimist and smart it does not look some "gamer" asthetic like the slanted ps4 did slightly. It also runs silently.
9th
XSX - its design follows funtion. Excellent cooling system and build quality and minimalist beauty. Its looks powerful but unobtrusive. The PS5 is to obtrusive, its to garish and immature, makes me think "gamer" asthetic that is meant to appeal to immature, ignorant and easily influenced people. Sony sometimes have a dumb design at launch and then lay off the drugs when designing the revision. I really wish they would not feed there designers LSD when designing the launch model.
N64 - no moving parts, silent.
6th
Gamcube - small, cute, well designed
7th
Draw, they both had pretty bad launch units and the revision were about equal.
8th
Xbox one - people gave it a lot of shit because it was big, but its not that big in a entertainment unit, its more astheticaly designed, its minimist and smart it does not look some "gamer" asthetic like the slanted ps4 did slightly. It also runs silently.
9th
XSX - its design follows funtion. Excellent cooling system and build quality and minimalist beauty. Its looks powerful but unobtrusive. The PS5 is to obtrusive, its to garish and immature, makes me think "gamer" asthetic that is meant to appeal to immature, ignorant and easily influenced people. Sony sometimes have a dumb design at launch and then lay off the drugs when designing the revision. I really wish they would not feed there designers LSD when designing the launch model.
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captainraincoat
Banned
Ahh the memories
Neo geo was about $1500 aud (that’s 80s/90s money as well )to import and to buy not to mention the cost of the games….and this was also before the internet so you had to mail off a little slip with your credit card on it and signa your closest importer which back then was the UK
And you waited about 6 months
When it did arrive you were in awe of how solid it was constructed and how it actually was an arcade at home…but that fucking price…I only ended getting 2 games and ended up selling it about 3 years later to pay for a car
01011001
Member
in practice the drawbacks that the SNES technically had didn't really come into play. I think what matters is how games that released during a generation actually used the hardware.
and the SNES hardware usually ran games at higher quality than the MegaDrive.
the reality simply often looked like this:
way fewer colors, less background detail, missing parallax layers (foreground chains in this stage) and missing animation frames
or here, similar drawbacks as above, + the devs used every trick the SNES had to enhance the mission briefing and intro sequences
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Futaleufu
Member
Games with prerendered elements are going to look better on a system with improved color depth.in practice the drawbacks that the SNES technically had didn't really come into play. I think what matters is how games that released during a generation actually used the hardware.
and the SNES hardware usually ran games at higher quality than the MegaDrive.
the reality simply often looked like this:
way fewer colors, less background detail, missing parallax layers (foreground chains in this stage) and missing animation frames
or here, similar drawbacks as above, + the devs used every trick the SNES had to enhance the mission briefing and intro sequences
The Genesis can run Mortal Kombat 3/Ultimate without slowdowns, unlike the SNES port where it keeps dropping frames all the time
Jasper was in the 2-4% failure rate range.
Sid Of Bee
Member
I think that's kind of overstating the slowdown in those games because I sure as heck didn't notice it. I was like 15 years old when those games came out and played the hell out of them. And yes, I also played the Genesis versions. The Super Nintendo version of those games almost seemed a mild generation ahead to me as far as graphics and sound. The combos worked fine. It was only the first game which still had amazing graphics compared to the Genesis that the combos didn't work the same. The thing is I'm not just comparing the CPUs. It's the overall package. The Super Nintendo had a much better controller for mortal Kombat. It also had low punch. If I remember correctly, the Genesis didn't even have that move. And even if there was some slight slowdown, which was imperceptible to me, there was so much more background detail that it was more than a fair trade-off.
Also the Super Nintendo had transparencies. Not even the Saturn could do transparencies well.
Romulus
Member
RoboFu
One of the green rats
1. not the pc-engine only ran 8bit code. its game were very cutdown compared to the snes which was true 16bit system. i mean you can plainly see the cutbacks on even the best PCengine ports like SF2.
2. all consoles made large objects out of many smaller sprites. The snes could technically do larger sprites because it could push more on screen and more per scan line. The problem the snes had was all the sprites had to be 2 sizes but there were ways to get around that with clever pallete use you could "cut up" a sprite to be different things and since the snes could push more colors per sprite it was good work around.
3. most neogeo games are shit.
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Happosai
Gold Member
I'd like to jump back to 4th Gen for a moment.
4th Gen:
PC Engine/TurboGrafx 16
Genesis/MegaDrive
SNES
NEOGEO
Maybe the CDi lol
The height in terms of push for engineering seemed to be PC Engine/TurboGrafx 16 and NEOGEO. SNK alone was way ahead of their time (especially with the cart version of NEOGEO). Carts were enormous but they were the very same used in the arcade machines. The fact that people were getting a console that was really an arcade player (when connected to a TV as a monitor) was something that just couldn't be appreciated enough by the generation that received it. It think pricing and availability had part to do with that. This isn't based on preference as I can say for myself and many others that the only truly affordable consoles of the 4th Gen were the SNES and MegaDrive.
I would add that Super Famicom had a much more color library of games and always seemed slightly more versatile than the SNES. Owning both -- the Super Famicom really stands out.
Sid Of Bee
Member
What if Sega or Nintendo decided to make a high-end expensive system? I honestly think both those companies could have easily outdone SNK from a hardware perspective with their resources.
Happosai
Gold Member
They very well could have and almost did (in Nintendo's case). Nintendo's co-op project with Sony to create a CD-ROM prototype of an early PS1 and also on Nintendo's end with The Satellaview. Many likely scoffed at the idea of the The Satellaview at the time and now that generation plays online gaming. It was an expensive and limited concept but it was an engineering monument and showed that Nintendo did have the money to back up something bigger than the SNES.
Same goes for Sega. The Sega CD had much more potential that what it was given but just like the Saturn...it was ahead of it's time and for whatever reason, CD-ROM-based consoles didn't get the attention they deserved until PS1. I don't even recall anyone I knew owning the 3DO. But I had cousins that had the Sega CD and Saturn when they first came out.
Sid Of Bee
Member
Those were add-ons to a base system that was much less powerful than the Neo Geo. While totally irrational, what I'm really talking about is if Nintendo or Sega decided to make a $699 console in 1990. What would the specs be? Just the console itself. No add-ons or anything like that. And then also not care about the cost of the cartridges and just adding as much memory as possible without worrying about trying to meet a $50 price point. What could they have done? In my opinion, they could have easily outdone SNK.
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Happosai
Gold Member
That is possible but I think Sega sorta took that risk. Not quite to the level of a $699 console but among other things which broke them from being a mainline competitor to Sony and Nintendo in the early 2000's. Nintendo has always had the engineering power to have created something bigger but they tend to focus more on simplicity and popular software releases. They're not going to push on hardware because it's just never been their thing. If I gave another example of where they 'almost' did it would be another add-on. That would have been the original Famicom but the disk-system rather than the carts. The Disk-system already had games that were relatively close to 16-bit and it pushed. If that add-on has been adapted into a ROM-based console for the 4th generation; then they would have been something else.
Given Nintendo's excelled reputation from the NES; I believe they could have pulled it off but - again, they knew their limits from a marketing perspective. It's not like they never had the power but they tend to play in a different court than the other developers. I respect that.
The 360 had a 100% failure rate at launch.
I would possibly say (the launch model) is the worst engineered console of all time.
M1chl
Currently Gif and Meme Champion
Technically I thought, like a programming etc. I didn't consider the failure rate, because I had one 360 whole gen (jumped around Mirrors Edge)
JLB
Banned
Slim is horrible. Standard PS2 on the other handIt is hard to argue against the PS2 Slim though, that thing was unreal.
Though I give you that Slim was a much more convenient form factor.
