Jaguar vs. 32X?

[jbanes]

i'm not denying the Jaguar being a "64-bit" system when everything is added up. My question is why are the games so crappy for a system that was supposed to be "powerful"?

Because it wasn't designed with 3D in mind. It was built when the Genesis and SNES were the kings of 2D video gaming and that's who Atari was competing against. However, 2D on the Jaguar is about the best you'll ever see.

http://www.landley.net/history/mirror/games/mathieson.htm

 

Q: When and why did you decide the creation of Jaguar (and more especially the two main chips : TOM and Jerry) ?

 

John Mathieson: "The concept for Jaguar started in about 1990 with investigation of 3D rendering pipelines, and colour space. The early design work was all about the graphics engines. The video output path was based on an earlier project called Panther that got cancelled as Jaguar was making such good progress. Panther was the ultimate 2D graphics engine. Jaguar added the GPU and blitter which gave it its 3D graphics capabilities. Later when we wanted a solution for audio we added another GPU for sound, as it is a good general purpose DSP."

 

Alien vs. Predator, Doom are both good games, but with 2d sprites in a 3d atmosphere, again, it's not something that couldn't be done on a 16-bit system.

Q: Before your answer, I thought AvP and Fight for Life were the games which pushed Jaguar to its limits. However, AvP seems to be the most popular game on Jaguar. Do you like it or do you prefer Doom (I know it is an old passionate debate :-)) ?

 

John Mathieson: "AVP was pretty cool as a demo, but the game was much slower. They spent too much time using the 68000 to track activity on the levels and not enough time on animation. The original demo version was much smoother, but had no game play Fight for Life pushed quite hard, but the programmer, whose name escapes me, was not all that good."

 

 

Again, I'm not a programmer or anything. I don't understand the architecture or anything of the Jag, but by logic of this arguement, shouldn't the Jaguar have been capable of producing graphics above par of 16-bit?

Sega and Nintendo had world class programmers who had years of experience writing games for the Genesis and SNES. Atari basically had a bunch of guys in a basement writing games for the Jaguar. Do the math.

Pretty much.

[kevincal]

i'm not denying the Jaguar being a "64-bit" system when everything is added up. My question is why are the games so crappy for a system that was supposed to be "powerful"? Bubsy, Pitfall, Dragon, and probably others, were also done on 16-bit systems and were just as good or better than the Jag versions. You have the 3d games that were extremely basic, other than a few that actually used textured polygons, that could be done on the SNES and Genesis as well, just look at Virtua Racing on the Genesis. Alien vs. Predator, Doom are both good games, but with 2d sprites in a 3d atmosphere, again, it's not something that couldn't be done on a 16-bit system. Ultra Vortek, Ksunami Ninja? C'mon they're blatent rip offs of Mortal Kombat and any Mortal Kombat on the 16-bit systems blows away both of these games by a long shot in both the graphical department and the gameplay department.

 

Again, I'm not a programmer or anything. I don't understand the architecture or anything of the Jag, but by logic of this arguement, shouldn't the Jaguar have been capable of producing graphics above par of 16-bit? Hell, my Neo CD pumps out better graphics than the Jaguar, and Viewpoint, with NO true 3d, pumps out better 3d than actual Jaguar 3d, whats up with that. Was it just the laziness of the programmers, or was this thing just that hard to program for?

 

The reason for the crappy games is lazy developers who didn't fully utilize the Jag's architecture (Not even close). So they took the easy way out, which the 68000 allowed them to do since the Genesis has the exact same chip. (16-bit conversions) Atari is partly to blame since they, it seems, didn't offer much in the way of help to developers to take advantage of the powerfull 64-bit aspects of the Jag, because it is a complicated beast. Kinda like the Saturn I guess...Except I think the reason the Saturn put out more impressive games, graphically, is because Sega actually cared about releasing quality games, whereas it seems Atari management was satisfied with getting ANY games released...

 

If Atari could have got some big name companies with big teams of highly skilled programmers, there would have been many more PS and Saturn caliber games on the Jag. Another blame could be put on the videogame print media of the early-mid 90. Nearly all magazines never gave the Jag much if any coverage, and most just made fun of the Jag from the get go. Even when groudbreaking games such as AvP came out, some still held a grudge against the Jag and rated AvP lower than it should have. Even the haters couldn't bash Tempest 2000 though...lol.

 

Oh and which Jag games do you own? Cus I'd love to point you to some of the better Jag games out there.

Edited June 5, 2007 by kevincal

[kevincal]

Viewpoint, with NO true 3d, pumps out better 3d than actual Jaguar 3d,

 

And Donkey Kong Country, with no true 3D, pumps out better 3D than the Playstation.

 

But wait, that's nothing. Check out the normal mapping, real time skin deformation, and self shadowing of Mortal Kombat, which came out in 1992, and still features more realistic looking character models than the PS3, with only a slight hit to frame rate, due to the mostly due to the limitations of the storage format than anything else.

 

Pre-rendered 3-d is the same as taking a photograph of a model. It can't be altered, only displayed. It can't be compared to a genuine polygon engine, because a polygon engine creates the entire model, inside the computer, to be manipulated on the fly.

 

Wait a minute...Donkey Kong Country pumps out better 3D than any PS games? Uh...lol. No.

And MK2's blurry models are better than anything on the PS3...Uh...

[jbanes]

The reason for the crappy games is lazy developers who didn't fully utilize the Jag's architecture (Not even close).

I'm not sure if "lazy" is fair to the original developers. The Jaguar was a weird system in its time. Programmers were used to much more straightforward console designs. Push them into 3D programming (which was a brand new field in game development at the time) and you have a recipe for normally "good" programmers doing "bad" work. The learning curve was incredibly steep and Atari didn't do enough to help.

[DracIsBack]

i'm not denying the Jaguar being a "64-bit" system when everything is added up. My question is why are the games so crappy for a system that was supposed to be "powerful"?

 

Among others

 

1. Crappy development tools

2. A dificult programming environment

3. Development houses didn't believe enough in the Jaguar to invest in decent development for it. If something is risky, do you want to spend a bunch of cash supporting it?

 

There's a lot of stuff that was quickly ported (cheaply) from 16-bit systems, with almost no updates.

 

Alien vs. Predator, Doom are both good games, but with 2d sprites in a 3d atmosphere, again, it's not something that couldn't be done on a 16-bit system.

 

Show me anything on the SNES that looks that ALIEN VS. PREDATOR. Seriously.

[DracIsBack]

The reason for the crappy games is lazy developers who didn't fully utilize the Jag's architecture (Not even close).

I'm not sure if "lazy" is fair to the original developers. The Jaguar was a weird system in its time. Programmers were used to much more straightforward console designs. Push them into 3D programming (which was a brand new field in game development at the time) and you have a recipe for normally "good" programmers doing "bad" work. The learning curve was incredibly steep and Atari didn't do enough to help.

 

That, and economics. It cost more to build something from the ground up than to cheaply port. Donkey Kong Country was raised earlier. Cool game at the time, but it also took them many years - and boatloads of money - to figure out HOW TO DO IT.

[spiffyone]

Did you just call the GPU a 64-bit processor?

 

No, I specifically called it a [b]32/64 [/b] processor.

 

Read again:

 

the GPU is established as a 32/64 processor (in much the same way the 32-bit 68k is often labeled a 16/32 processor)

 

You were defining a consoles "bitness" on the ALUs of the processors, right?

 

Well, the 68k, which is established as a 32-bit processor on wikipedia, of which you are so fond, has 16-bit ALUs. Yes, it has three of them. And two work in tandem at 16-bits each to "read" 32-bit values. But the third is left to "do the math", and that ALU is operating on a 16-bit level.

 

Again, you can read the 68k Wiki page for yourself:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_68000

 

It could access 32-bits (two daisy chained ALUs), but could only work on those 16-bits at a time (with the left over ALU).

 

Going by your own definition of "bitness" being tied to ALU size, the 68k would be a 16-bit processor.

 

And yet it is not. It "had a flat 32-bit address space". Addresses were "stored as 32-bit quantities" (from wiki).

 

Yet it only worked on those at a 16-bit level with the left over ALU. So, again, going by your definition of the size of the ALUs and what level of maths done by them, the 68k would be a 16-bit unit.

 

And that's why quite a few, like Id's John Carmack, call such a processor a 16/32 processor. Working on 32-bit data 16-bits at a time.

 

The GPU on Tom, meanwhile, had 32-bit registers, but "can read 64-bits of data in one instruction" and has "access to all 64-bits of the bus at one time" (from Jung's FAQ, and the tech docs).

 

And because of that design that is something like a hybrid, something very close to what the 68k does with 16 and 32-bits (except on the GPU it's 32 and 64-bits), the GPU is referred to in the FAQ, and by developers who worked on the Jaguar (like, again, Id's John Carmack) as a 32/64 processor.

 

Which is wrong. If Tom is 64-bit, then answer this question: Why isn't the Pentium III a 64-bit or 128-bit chip?

 

Again, look to the 68k example I used. Why is that a 32-bit chip when it's working at a 16-bit level?

 

Again, 16/32 for the 68k. And 32/64 for the GPU on Tom. The Blitter and Object Processor are both 64-bit components. As the GPU, Blitter and Object Processor are all on Tom, by extension one can say that Tom is a 64-bit chip. or at the very least a 32/64 chip.

 

Is that correct? In your view, no. In the view of someone like Carmack and others who designed and worked on the console, yes.

 

Opinions!

[spiffyone]

And the Jag should've shipped with an 68020 processor, as was on board in one of the original designs, and which the design docs themselves state.

 

That way even if developers couldn't wrap their minds around something like what Gorf is alluding to (having the Motorolla chip boot up the system and then lay idle and off the bus while the Tom and Jerry chips do everything), they'd at least have a true 32-bit Motorolla chip to work with (as it had 32-bit ALUs, so no confusion there). Wouldn't have prevented lazy 16-bit ports, but some developers could've at least wrapped their minds on developing with the 020 as the CPU if they couldn't get used to the GPU on Tom working as the CPU.

 

And as was stated earlier, if they had gone with the 020, then it would've been connected to the bus at 32-bits, and maybe the DSP could've been so as well (and, IMHO, regardless of whether it was a 68k or an 020, Jerry should've been connected to 32-bits of the system bus so the DSP could be used as CPU at full 32-bits).

 

BTW, to Gorf:

 

Are you sure one can't mod a Jag with an 020 chip? I mean, yeah there are more registers and what not, and size differences...but there's got to be a way. Maybe it could be like the Amiga board mods, like the Viper expansion boards that connect to the 68k socket on the Amiga 500. Or maybe something connected to one of the expansion ports, perhaps?

 

I don't know what such a thing would do for stock Jag games, though.

[jbanes]

Spiffy, I don't really want to start this up again. I'll PM you with the answers.

[Gorf]

The reason for the crappy games is lazy developers who didn't fully utilize the Jag's architecture (Not even close).

I'm not sure if "lazy" is fair to the original developers. The Jaguar was a weird system in its time. Programmers were used to much more straightforward console designs. Push them into 3D programming (which was a brand new field in game development at the time) and you have a recipe for normally "good" programmers doing "bad" work. The learning curve was incredibly steep and Atari didn't do enough to help.

 

 

Ah...thank goodness....a hopefully more agreeable subject....

 

 

Lazy is fair in some ways but not in others.

 

Not the dev's fault:

 

I think Atari is responsible for the lack of tools . You cant write a killer app fast and effeciently

and ESPECIALLY not with a lot of pre-thinking on a new technology, multi-processos system

When the only tools you give the coder is a 68k C compiler with an assembler

that only allows RISC in the local, no tools for coding the blitter setup or the opl lists

You can expect long delays and less than expected results.

 

All of this has to be done by hand. You need good tools to get good results fast.

Another problem is Atari not updating the tools when the complaints came in.

 

 

Totally the dev's fault:

 

As a coder, I never let the lack of tools hold me back. Granted it takes a lot longer if

you dont have good ones, but I still wrote my own. id Software actually rewrote the

parts of the tools but again they rewrote them using 68k as the center of attention.

I will give id credit though as they really laid off of the 68k alot more than most.

 

For Jaguar to perform at high speed with nice effects you HAVE to take advantage of the

fact that the 68k does not need to operate at all one the system is booted. You cut the

bus width 75 % and the clock speed to half every time the 68k hits the bus. Even with the

highly inefficient supplied Atari sample renderer you can achive very impressive results

by moving the 68k code to the GPU.

 

Again, go see the surrounded Demo posted in the forum here somewhere. I should post the

68k based versus the 68k only used as a vblank handler with everything else the DSP and the

GPU. BIG difference. 12- 15 FPS jumped to 60 FPS with it dropping to 30 only during the big

kaboom. That is the fault of the Atari sample renderer only using data in 16 bit words and NOT

using the phrase load to grab them. Dont ask me why. Scott my render write ran a few mods

on that and the speed trippled...I cant wait till he gets the new renderer going.

 

The more telling of this is that not only was the 68k based version of Surrounded slower

it was not doing nearly the amount of AI the newer version is, nor the same amount of polies.

The new version only wakes the 68k at vblank to tell the GPU to start up and draw again.

That is only becasue i did not have the GPU based interrupt ready at release..still dont...

too much more pressing work right now.

 

Once I get some time I will update the Surrounded demo with new main code tricks and no

68k at all!!! After boot the only instruction the 68k will boot is one 'stop #$2000' and let

the real work horses take over.

Edited June 5, 2007 by Gorf

[Gorf]

And the Jag should've shipped with an 68020 processor, as was on board in one of the original designs, and which the design docs themselves state.

 

It should have shipped with another RISC CORE that could run out of main without

fancy considerations for the pipeline and jump issues that plaged the TOM and JERRY.

 

I think a nice MIPS R1000/3000 would have been awsome and then you would have a less

memory, no hard drive cojag. that extra stuff could have been added via expansion port on the

Jaguar.

 

Either that or just Tom and Jerry on their own with two memory busses and a small unified cache

so they can talk to each other. No bus contentions that way and full bore full speed high powered

processing would have been what you would have seen from both chips all the time.

This is how the chips designers intended it to be but since Atari bought the design it was

theirs to do what they willed with.

 

 

 

BTW, to Gorf:

Are you sure one can't mod a Jag with an 020 chip? I mean, yeah there are more registers and what not, and size differences...but there's got to be a way. Maybe it could be like the Amiga board mods, like the Viper expansion boards that connect to the 68k socket on the Amiga 500. Or maybe something connected to one of the expansion ports, perhaps?

 

I don't know what such a thing would do for stock Jag games, though.

 

 

Of course you could be it would probably be simpler just to redesign the Jaguar.

[Atari5200]

to try to answers everyones questions towards me.

 

I have both Alien vs Predator and Doom. I prefer AVP. Doom is good, but Doom is doom is doom. at least with AVP you can switch it up by playing with the Predator or Alien or Marine.

 

As for my Library, here is what I have.

 

Doom

AVP

Wolfenstein

Val'dier Skiing

White men can't jump

Iwar

Checkerd Flag

Iron Soldier

Towers II

Syndicate

Dragon: The Bruce Lee story

Ultra Vortek

Ksunami Ninja

Rayman

Dino Dudes

Super Burnout

Flashback

Tempest 2000

 

Not a bad collection, but nothing really to impressive over what other systems could do during that same era. At least in my opinion. Instead of trashing the Jaguar for what it is, i'd rather just start to understand it. And I'm sorry. I cannot understand the quality of these games. They are very low quality in my opinion with what you guys are saying the Jag should be capable of doing. Most of those games I listed could very easily been done on a 16-bit system, and some were. Maybe not Iron Soldier or AVP to an extent or even Fight for Life, but in my opinion of the cart games, I would think that 80% have or could also be ran with the same quality on a 16-bit system, or 24-bit for Neo Geo, if you buy into their bit theory, even that is still just a 16-bit system.

 

I think it's just the fact that bits don't matter. I look at games for the Saturn, PS1, N64, 32bit, 32bit, 64bit, and then you have the Jaguar (64bit) and it's almost laughable that the system more closely compares to the 16-bit era than the 32/64-bit.

Edited June 5, 2007 by Atari5200

[Gorf]

to try to answers everyones questions towards me.

 

I have both Alien vs Predator and Doom. I prefer AVP. Doom is good, but Doom is doom is doom. at least with AVP you can switch it up by playing with the Predator or Alien or Marine.

 

As for my Library, here is what I have.

 

Doom

AVP

Wolfenstein

Val'dier Skiing

White men can't jump

Iwar

Checkerd Flag

Iron Soldier

Towers II

Syndicate

Dragon: The Bruce Lee story

Ultra Vortek

Ksunami Ninja

Rayman

Dino Dudes

Super Burnout

Flashback

Tempest 2000

 

Not a bad collection, but nothing really to impressive over what other systems could do during that same era. At least in my opinion. Instead of trashing the Jaguar for what it is, i'd rather just start to understand it. And I'm sorry. I cannot understand the quality of these games. They are very low quality in my opinion with what you guys are saying the Jag should be capable of doing. Most of those games I listed could very easily been done on a 16-bit system, and some were. Maybe not Iron Soldier or AVP to an extent or even Fight for Life, but in my opinion of the cart games, I would think that 80% have or could also be ran with the same quality on a 16-bit system, or 24-bit for Neo Geo, if you buy into their bit theory, even that is still just a 16-bit system.

 

I think it's just the fact that bits don't matter. I look at games for the Saturn, PS1, N64, 32bit, 32bit, 64bit, and then you have the Jaguar (64bit) and it's almost laughable that the system more closely compares to the 16-bit era than the 32/64-bit.

 

 

You are right...bits do not matter if you do not make proper use and efficient use of them.

Every game you mention above is HEAVILY reliant on the 68000. that is why the are not

what they can be.

 

 

I think you are being a bit unfair about Tempest 2000 and Iron soldier considering they

definitely did not squeeze the system. I have seen the source for both. They rely a lot

on the choke chip(the 68k that chokes the very life out of the system).

 

The 68k is to the Jaguar as kryptonite is to Superman. Same principal.

[A Sprite]

Viewpoint, with NO true 3d, pumps out better 3d than actual Jaguar 3d,

 

And Donkey Kong Country, with no true 3D, pumps out better 3D than the Playstation.

 

But wait, that's nothing. Check out the normal mapping, real time skin deformation, and self shadowing of Mortal Kombat, which came out in 1992, and still features more realistic looking character models than the PS3, with only a slight hit to frame rate, due to the mostly due to the limitations of the storage format than anything else.

 

Pre-rendered 3-d is the same as taking a photograph of a model. It can't be altered, only displayed. It can't be compared to a genuine polygon engine, because a polygon engine creates the entire model, inside the computer, to be manipulated on the fly.

 

Wait a minute...Donkey Kong Country pumps out better 3D than any PS games? Uh...lol. No.

And MK2's blurry models are better than anything on the PS3...Uh...

 

 

Sure. Let's look at the evidence -

 

 

Typical screen, we have curved surfaces, anti-aliased textures - none of it's actually 3D of course, but that was my point.

 

Just to be fair, I'll compare it to a screen from the same people, one generation later:

 

 

The graphics are more immediate, and have more personality in motion, but they've sacrificed detail, and clarity.

 

Does that mean DKC is technologically superior to 32 and 64 bit systems? Of course not. But it does show why it's not fair to compare Viewpoint and CyberMorph. Two different types of display.

Edited June 5, 2007 by A Sprite

[kevincal]

The reason for the crappy games is lazy developers who didn't fully utilize the Jag's architecture (Not even close).

I'm not sure if "lazy" is fair to the original developers. The Jaguar was a weird system in its time. Programmers were used to much more straightforward console designs. Push them into 3D programming (which was a brand new field in game development at the time) and you have a recipe for normally "good" programmers doing "bad" work. The learning curve was incredibly steep and Atari didn't do enough to help.

 

Well, I agree partly. I think most of the devs weren't given much to work with in regards to detailed dev tools... But still! I think a lot of Jag devs and potential Jag devs were just drooling over the Saturn, PS, and N64 to care to put much effort into a Jag game that probably wouldn't sell well given the limited Jag ownership.

[kevincal]

to try to answers everyones questions towards me.

 

I have both Alien vs Predator and Doom. I prefer AVP. Doom is good, but Doom is doom is doom. at least with AVP you can switch it up by playing with the Predator or Alien or Marine.

 

As for my Library, here is what I have.

 

Doom

AVP

Wolfenstein

Val'dier Skiing

White men can't jump

Iwar

Checkerd Flag

Iron Soldier

Towers II

Syndicate

Dragon: The Bruce Lee story

Ultra Vortek

Ksunami Ninja

Rayman

Dino Dudes

Super Burnout

Flashback

Tempest 2000

 

Not a bad collection, but nothing really to impressive over what other systems could do during that same era. At least in my opinion. Instead of trashing the Jaguar for what it is, i'd rather just start to understand it. And I'm sorry. I cannot understand the quality of these games. They are very low quality in my opinion with what you guys are saying the Jag should be capable of doing. Most of those games I listed could very easily been done on a 16-bit system, and some were. Maybe not Iron Soldier or AVP to an extent or even Fight for Life, but in my opinion of the cart games, I would think that 80% have or could also be ran with the same quality on a 16-bit system, or 24-bit for Neo Geo, if you buy into their bit theory, even that is still just a 16-bit system.

 

I think it's just the fact that bits don't matter. I look at games for the Saturn, PS1, N64, 32bit, 32bit, 64bit, and then you have the Jaguar (64bit) and it's almost laughable that the system more closely compares to the 16-bit era than the 32/64-bit.

 

Ok, you should check out: Cybermorph, Zool 2, Power Drive Rally, Brutal Sports Football, Iron Soldier 2 cart (If you're ritch... ), Protector or P:SE, Atari Karts, Defender 2000, Jaguar CD if you have the money. The VLM is really cool, Battlemorph is pretty cool, World Tour Racing, Gorf Classic , Iron Soldier 2...That's a good start. Oh, and Battlesphere or BS:G If you have a money tree in the backyard!

[kevincal]

Viewpoint, with NO true 3d, pumps out better 3d than actual Jaguar 3d,

 

And Donkey Kong Country, with no true 3D, pumps out better 3D than the Playstation.

 

But wait, that's nothing. Check out the normal mapping, real time skin deformation, and self shadowing of Mortal Kombat, which came out in 1992, and still features more realistic looking character models than the PS3, with only a slight hit to frame rate, due to the mostly due to the limitations of the storage format than anything else.

 

Pre-rendered 3-d is the same as taking a photograph of a model. It can't be altered, only displayed. It can't be compared to a genuine polygon engine, because a polygon engine creates the entire model, inside the computer, to be manipulated on the fly.

 

Wait a minute...Donkey Kong Country pumps out better 3D than any PS games? Uh...lol. No.

And MK2's blurry models are better than anything on the PS3...Uh...

 

 

Sure. Let's look at the evidence -

 

 

Typical screen, we have curved surfaces, anti-aliased textures - none of it's actually 3D of course, but that was my point.

 

Just to be fair, I'll compare it to a screen from the same people, one generation later:

 

 

The graphics are more immediate, and have more personality in motion, but they've sacrificed detail, and clarity.

 

Does that mean DKC is technologically superior to 32 and 64 bit systems? Of course not. But it does show why it's not fair to compare Viewpoint and CyberMorph. Two different types of display.

 

Ehem...I've owned both Donkey Kong Country and Donkey Kong 64 and played them extensively. And I still find it laughable that you think a SNES game looks better than a PS game!!! (Really, there are too many really impressive 3D games on the PS to even list...) And by the way I love both the SNES and PS!

[kevincal]

And also...the Neo Geo...I owned an AES...Ya, there graphics are cool and there's lot of sound. But it's expensive as hell and most of the games are WAY too hard. Dying all the time isn't my idea of fun gaming!!! I owned about 10 AES games and I like the Jag significantly more than the Neo, especially since the Jag is a lot more affordable. And as for the Neo CD, ya, more affordable, but all I gotta say is...Single speed CD-Rom...LOL

[ZylonBane]

Duke Nukem 3D looked better than Quake.

[DracIsBack]

Doom

AVP

Wolfenstein

Val'dier Skiing

White men can't jump

Iwar

Checkerd Flag

Iron Soldier

Towers II

Syndicate

Dragon: The Bruce Lee story

Ultra Vortek

Ksunami Ninja

Rayman

Dino Dudes

Super Burnout

Flashback

Tempest 2000

 

 

Most of those games I listed could very easily been done on a 16-bit system, and some were.

 

Based upon your list, I often do agree, with a couple of caveats. In 1993, one of the advantages that the Jaguar (and 3DO and 32X) brought over the 16-bitters was a lot more colors. Instead of 64 or 256 onscreen colors (as was the case generally with the Genesis and SNES), they put thousands and thousands of colors on screen. Some of the games you list had many times more colors than what the SNES and Genesis could easily do. Rayman is a good example, it has more colors on screen at one time than the Genesis and SNES have in their entire palettes put together.

 

Others like Doom and Wolfenstein weren't exactly successful ports on 16-bit systems, even with a ton of effort, and - in some cases - extra hardware. Slow frame rates, low color counts, pop ups etc.

Maybe not Iron Soldier or AVP to an extent or even Fight for Life, but in my opinion of the cart games, I would think that 80% have or could also be ran with the same quality on a 16-bit system

 

Same quality is pushing it. While I agree that some games should have been more of a leap forward, I'm skeptical that a lot of these games would have been done the same way. Maybe, at a lower frame rate, maybe with far fewer colors, maybe with no texture mapping and far fewer polygons, sure.

 

 

, and then you have the Jaguar (64bit) and it's almost laughable that the system more closely compares to the 16-bit era than the 32/64-bit.

 

Do keep in mind though, the Jaguar was at least two years older than just about all the systems you list.

Edited June 6, 2007 by DracIsBack

[Gorf]

Duke Nukem 3D looked better than Quake.

 

Not knowing exactly which platform we are talking about.....

 

In some ways yes it did. However, keep in mind Quake was really the first generation of a

TRUE 3D poly based engine. Experience was still being gained. By that time the pseudo 3D

engines of that Wolf 3D, Doom, Duke Nukem, on and on genre, were an older technology

that had come a long way. So to me it is not suprising that an older tech coming into its own

would look better than baby tech still being tried by fire.

 

The old 2600 keeps proving that there is more that can be done with it. Just look at batari

BASIC. There is no reason to believe the newer and next gen consoles will keep suprising

people, now and for years to come.

[Atari5200]

I have to disagree with Duke 3d looking better than Quake. I have both for PC and Quake looks much better, at least in my opinion, but Duke 3d is more fun.

 

As for a SNES game looking better than a PS1 game, maybe 2d. The SNES was cartridge based as the PS1 was CD, as everybody knows, and 2d is more taxing on a system than 3d, which is why the PS1 sucked at 2d. With that being said, since the SNES was cartridge based, it didn't need to load each individual frame which the PS1's limited ram, had to do. The Saturn, with the ram cart, didn't have to worry about this and is why games like Marvel vs Street fighter, Vampire Savior, or X-men vs Street fighter are far superior to the PS1 versions. So for 2d games, maybe the SNES had some that could have looked or ran better than the PS1, but even that is a stretch.

Edited June 6, 2007 by Atari5200

[spiffyone]

Ehem...I've owned both Donkey Kong Country and Donkey Kong 64 and played them extensively. And I still find it laughable that you think a SNES game looks better than a PS game!!! (Really, there are too many really impressive 3D games on the PS to even list...) And by the way I love both the SNES and PS!

 

Well, I don't think he's stating his preference on a technical basis. Rather, it's an aesthetic one.

 

And while PSone had a bunch of 3D games that SNES in no way could pull off, IMHO 3D on home consoles didn't start to really look good until Dreamcast. That's one of the reasons I mainly skipped over the "32/64-bit gen" as much as I did.

 

Let me give you an example of what I mean by aesthetic sense:

 

Nights, for Sega's Saturn, could never be done on SNES. And yet, I find that a 2D SNES game like Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island looks better. Why? Not because of any technical stuff, as Saturn would be able to pull off a like game, but rather I favor the 2D, crayon-like art style of the SNES game (Yoshi's Island) over the polys of the Saturn game (Nights) with its meager textures, tile warping (although PSone games were much, much worse in that regard), and seams.

 

And I think that's why A Sprite compared DKC to DK64. The latter game could never be pulled off on SNES. But the former looks better, in his opinion, because it's actually a pretty good looking 2D title, while DK64 may have looked good at the time for a 3D game on a home console but it hasn't aged well. DKC has aged much better. Still holds up today as a quality looking 2D title.

[kevincal]

I have to disagree with Duke 3d looking better than Quake. I have both for PC and Quake looks much better, at least in my opinion, but Duke 3d is more fun.

 

As for a SNES game looking better than a PS1 game, maybe 2d. The SNES was cartridge based as the PS1 was CD, as everybody knows, and 2d is more taxing on a system than 3d, which is why the PS1 sucked at 2d. With that being said, since the SNES was cartridge based, it didn't need to load each individual frame which the PS1's limited ram, had to do. The Saturn, with the ram cart, didn't have to worry about this and is why games like Marvel vs Street fighter, Vampire Savior, or X-men vs Street fighter are far superior to the PS1 versions. So for 2d games, maybe the SNES had some that could have looked or ran better than the PS1, but even that is a stretch.

 

lol...NO, not 2D either...Compare MK3 or Street Fighter Alpha on the systems... The PS didn't "suck" at 2D...it was only slightly not as good as the Saturn in the 2D dept... You really are over-exagerrating the Saturn 2D being better than the PS 2D...I can't believe you think the SNES does better 2D than the PS...lmao!! You must really be a Sony hater.

[kevincal]

Ehem...I've owned both Donkey Kong Country and Donkey Kong 64 and played them extensively. And I still find it laughable that you think a SNES game looks better than a PS game!!! (Really, there are too many really impressive 3D games on the PS to even list...) And by the way I love both the SNES and PS!

 

Well, I don't think he's stating his preference on a technical basis. Rather, it's an aesthetic one.

 

And while PSone had a bunch of 3D games that SNES in no way could pull off, IMHO 3D on home consoles didn't start to really look good until Dreamcast. That's one of the reasons I mainly skipped over the "32/64-bit gen" as much as I did.

 

Let me give you an example of what I mean by aesthetic sense:

 

Nights, for Sega's Saturn, could never be done on SNES. And yet, I find that a 2D SNES game like Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island looks better. Why? Not because of any technical stuff, as Saturn would be able to pull off a like game, but rather I favor the 2D, crayon-like art style of the SNES game (Yoshi's Island) over the polys of the Saturn game (Nights) with its meager textures, tile warping (although PSone games were much, much worse in that regard), and seams.

 

And I think that's why A Sprite compared DKC to DK64. The latter game could never be pulled off on SNES. But the former looks better, in his opinion, because it's actually a pretty good looking 2D title, while DK64 may have looked good at the time for a 3D game on a home console but it hasn't aged well. DKC has aged much better. Still holds up today as a quality looking 2D title.

 

Um...there are so many great looking 2D games on the PS it's not even funny..and the Saturn. That blow anything on 16-bit away...lmao. Me thinks you just have a bias against the 32-bit gen and are a 16-bit fanboy! lol