It’s a wonder that the snes did oversold the genesis in sales

[Tanooki]

1 hour ago, MrBeefy said:

Bu-bu-bu...but NHL 94!

Best they ever did, and still was the crap release on SNES -- EA, always bastards to someone in any decade, consistent since the 80s.

[johannesmutlu]

Here i put both the snes & sega genesis in such perspective sothat the snes will appear to be not any better then the genesis/megadrive in most way’s,

eventrough we all know the story about what happened and how it happened,

but i tout that it would be still cool to share this picture?

[dudeguy]

On 8/3/2022 at 8:26 PM, Tanooki said:

You know to be fair the expansions both in a way helped at a core level both consoles.  Core only, after that, it only really helped Nintendo in the big picture.  Sega did great with the CD unit, had a good number of solid games and had good support for a stretch too but where the core idea was good and execution wasn't is what screwed them.  The 32X, a fracturing of the market at a bigger cost then wiping out it pretty fast.  Trying to re-use that in a gag worth $100 price tagged one off SVP in the epic Virtua Racing.  Then killing the CD before it should have because Saturn, a system that really fubar'd, and because it was so screwed they threw the equivalent of a boss baby level corporate temper tantrum and middle fingered all their consumers and shit canned anything Genesis and Game Gear related entirely to push too little too late for the Dreamcast.  The only reason the Genesis and GG alone lasted and competed more wasn't Sega and their bs, it was Majesco Sales who got the rights to peddle both as new systems once more (Gen 3, GG with gray ovals different color buttons) and re-packaged quite a few games in cardboard boxes, cheap, a huge run of killer million sellers.

 

Then there was Nintendo, and I'm leaving another sega tidbit in here too, largely they didn't crap the bed except for the Super Scope, which went over as badly as the equally ill conceived equally overbearing (size and swing of it) Menacer... Why have a nice light comfy gun when you have bazooka or some b-movie sci-fi machine gun?  Yay?  Then here's where it deviates really.  SNES Mouse, sure it went with a genius art app Mario Paint but the total number of games that outright used it, and some that stealth used it was a lot, and very well done, some games just outright played better entirely with it including some very nice PC ports like Civilization and Lemmings 2.  And where the SVP was a costly joke at $100, you could buy DSP1-4, FX1+2, SA1, etc chipped games for a MSRP of $50, though some greedy stores did shoot for $60 which is lame, but happened.  Each of those may not have been as console level addon beefy as the SVP was like the stripped down little island of 32X it kind of was, but wow the specialized chips pulled off quite a lot.  Some just allowed for a bit more math to get away with more even out of the gate with Pilotwings, more advanced stuff such as effectively doubling the main CPU and quicker(SA1) was another, and yet another allowed for complicated math and more memory that allows stuff from Starfox1+2 to DOOM to the crazy motions layers and rotating sprites of Yoshis Island too.  And then, yes, what was just brought up, adding the entire Gameboy global library to your SNES in a respectably large window with perks, sometimes, many perks.  Super Gameboy with the borders, various levels of added color (lazy 4 shades to like 10-16 or so in a few colorized by section), preset colors for some games, digital audio including speech, even havnig a hidden SNES game inside in the case of Space Invaders.

 

So yeah, both did more with the hardware, but one largely won at it and the other bungled and then shot themselves not only in the foot, but the other foot, then knee capped on both of those as well.  Sega had no real way to win with all the repeated poor life choices they executed in a short order of time in around a 5 year spread in the 90s.  Gamers may not have realized it yet, but by about the time Donkey Kong Country came out (1994) they had already committed suicide, just a slow one.

Ever since the Johnny Depp trial, the phrase "they didn't crap the bed" takes on an entirely new level of awesomeness

[Tanooki]

Believe it or not, I largely somehow avoided it as I had zero interest in following either of their drama so I'll take your word for it.

[johannesmutlu]

Whether the whole was only loving supermarioworld,sonic the hedge hog or bonk’s adventure ,i don’t care anymore, am looking at a different perspective in that both sega,nintendo and nec did had a platformer for their own respective systems,and whther i do own and love the snes or not, it still just blows my mind how nintendo did came up a whopping 3 years later then the turbo grafix 16 ,2 years later then the sega genesis,but still won the 16bit war? 
it just sounds too impossible but nintendo just did,despite they mistakingly scrapped nes compatibility,the snes CD addon and despite it’s fair competition,they just did won the 16bit war.

Edited September 7, 2022 by johannesmutlu

[Tanooki]

1) It's possible largely due to the quality obvious improvement of what the hardware could handle and put out in the audio/visual compared to the other two.

2) The software catalog, it was legendary in local circles as fast as it came out as much as it is now globally, the other two, not so much

3) Sega killed the Genesis before it should have, Majesco kept it going longer with the stripped Gen3 system and re-packed games, but it still soured people, Sega soured people wholly with the 32X/Saturn debacle enough to kill them from hardware.

4) Scrapping NES compatibility was not a mistake, the media had to dig for a few whining mommies on tv to bitch about teaching kids the value of a dollar.  Upgrading your goods was nothing new, gaming didn't start it

5) The SNES CD had to sadly die, Sony tried to trick Nintendo into pressing discs, making the units, only making money on the units, while Sony got 100% of the licensing on the CDs which would have killed Nintendo financially, it was a trap.

 

All this is historically known and as far as gaming historians go, published fact.  You're not confused, you're trolling, yet again.  Why else would you wake up a 5 week dead thread with more nonsense?

[mbd39]

I've been wondering why Sega didn't make Golden Axe Warrior for Genesis rather than only SMS. They could've had their own Zelda clone on the Genesis before A Link to the Past was even released in the US.

 

 

 

[Kirk_Johnston]

On 9/7/2022 at 9:20 PM, johannesmutlu said:

Whether the whole was only loving supermarioworld,sonic the hedge hog or bonk’s adventure ,i don’t care anymore, am looking at a different perspective in that both sega,nintendo and nec did had a platformer for their own respective systems,and whther i do own and love the snes or not, it still just blows my mind how nintendo did came up a whopping 3 years later then the turbo grafix 16 ,2 years later then the sega genesis,but still won the 16bit war? 
it just sounds too impossible but nintendo just did,despite they mistakingly scrapped nes compatibility,the snes CD addon and despite it’s fair competition,they just did won the 16bit war.

It's really actually quite simple: It was the better overall gaming experience when you consider everything together as a whole (graphics, audio, controls, games), and it sold more systems worldwide overall as a result.

 

Both the other consoles were great and had their own strengths too, and Sega's masterful marketing almost clawed the win, but, when all is said and done, the SNES was the system that ultimately deserved to win, and it did.

 

Now, some people might disagree and personally think one of the other consoles should have won, and that's their prerogative, but they're never going to convince me of that belief based on the actual available facts and various ways of measuring and judging all this stuff (console specs, games library, system sales, influence on industry, enduring legacy, etc).

 

I think all three consoles are great, but SNES did indeed win the 16-bit-era console war (rightly so, imo), as you have said, and that's just that.

 

Now, what the hell is up with the modern SNES homebrew scene and where are all the new indie games for it....

Edited September 11, 2022 by Kirk_Johnston

[MrBeefy]

On 9/11/2022 at 3:44 AM, Kirk_Johnston said:

Now, what the hell is up with the modern SNES homebrew scene and where are all the new indie games for it....

Where have you been? Don't you know that it would be a miracle for people to program for the SNES over Genesis?

[digdugnate]

[Kirk_Johnston]

15 hours ago, MrBeefy said:

Where have you been? Don't you know that it would be a miracle for people to program for the SNES over Genesis?

Well, sadly, that thinking seems to be exactly where the homebrew dev scene is at right now.

 

The SNES has so much to give, yet most people are clearly going with Genesis for their new homebrew games, probably mostly because it's just easier and quicker to get something half-decent up and running on it (according to most sources). But, given there's literally multiple millions more SNES fans out there in the world (just under 50 million units sold of the original SNES vs Genesis around 35 million when including the bargain bin Genesis 3 and Brazilian variations, and, even more recently, just under 5.5 million SNES Classic Minis sold vs not even 1 million Genesis Minis), I'd really expect to see the SNES get a lot more love from the dev scene in modern times.

 

If someone finally gets around to making a really good SNES SDK, and with some great documentation too, I think things could change quite dramatically. But there doesn't seem to be a lot happening on that front right now. . . .

Edited September 27, 2022 by Kirk_Johnston

[+Gemintronic]

1 minute ago, Kirk_Johnston said:

Well, sadly, that seems to be where the homebrew dev scene is at right now. The SNES has so much to give, yet most people are clearly going with Genesis for their new homebrew games, probably mostly because it's just easier to get some half-decent stuff up and running on it. But, given there's literally multiple millions more SNES fans out there in the world (just under 50 million units of the original SNES vs Genesis around 35 million when including the bargain bucket Genesis 3 and Brazilian variations, and just under 5.5 million SNES Classic Minis sold vs not even 1 million Genesis Minis), I'd really expect to see the SNES get a lot more love from the dev scene in modern times. If someone finally gets around to making a really good SNES SDK, and with some great documentation too, I think things could change quite dramatically, but there doesn't seem to be a lot happening on that front right now. . . .

 

Here you go:

https://github.com/alekmaul/pvsneslib

 

Documentation:

http://www.portabledev.com/pvsneslib/doc/

[Kirk_Johnston]

8 minutes ago, Gemintronic said:

 

Here you go:

https://github.com/alekmaul/pvsneslib

 

Documentation:

http://www.portabledev.com/pvsneslib/doc/

Thanks for the links. Now I guess we'll just have to wait a little while to find out if this is truly what the SNES development community is looking for (that would be people smarter than I, who actually understand how to use any of this). I really hope it is.

Edited September 27, 2022 by Kirk_Johnston

[Tanooki]

I hope that helps take off with something.

 

The thing is some years back SNES did have a starter of a good community of game makers and some made some incredible strides in quality, then it just went out like a fart in the wind... stunk and blew over to where we are now.  One awesome high point, though it took harvesting carts at the time annoyingly, was the DSP chip required HIND STRIKE.  This one had this between stage flavor of like Desert Strike(etc) but the game play was MODE7 style and handled like a more fleshed out game of the Attack Chopper from Pilotwings.  It's a really fantastic game, feels commercial pretty much.

[+Gemintronic]

11 minutes ago, Kirk_Johnston said:

Thanks. I guess we'll have to wait a little while to find out if this is what the SNES development community is looking for. I really hope it is.

 

Unfortunately, my hunch is that existing devs are born and bred on assembly.  It'll take a generation of new programmers to both make the development tools and be open minded about higher level languages.  We're starting to see the first glimmers with batari BASIC, 7800bas, JagStudio and SecondBASIC for the Genesis.

 

 

[Kirk_Johnston]

24 minutes ago, Gemintronic said:

 

Unfortunately, my hunch is that existing devs are born and bred on assembly.  It'll take a generation of new programmers to both make the development tools and be open minded about higher level languages.  We're starting to see the first glimmers with batari BASIC, 7800bas, JagStudio and SecondBASIC for the Genesis.

 

 

But, isn't the main issue with SNES homebrew development that it's basically necessary to stick with assembly to truly get anything decent out of it, so it's not quite as simple as just making something more modern and higher-level languages, which are generally less efficient and more resource-wasteful, that you might get away with on SDKs for some other consoles like the Genesis and Jaguar (I think I read something like that)?

 

So, ideally, shouldn't any truly great SNES SDK be built around working with assembly but just have some kind of really slick and simple development interface shell that makes the whole process a lot easier and faster in some way, or maybe even takes some higher-level language and then converts it back to the most efficient SNES compatible code somehow, or something like that? Not that I fully understand what I'm even talking about here to be honest.

 

Although, if it just gives us more games, I'd have no problem with people at least having something available to make simple SNES titles that don't really do much to push the system or best optimise for it. It wouldn't be the ideal solution imo, because I actually want to see new SNES titles that push it to its limits and genuinely make the system shine, but it would absolutely be better that what it seems the SNES development community has right now, if it at least gave us something more than the tiny trickle of new titles coming out for the console right now.

Edited September 27, 2022 by Kirk_Johnston

[+Gemintronic]

5 minutes ago, Kirk_Johnston said:

But, isn't the main issue with SNES homebrew development that it's basically necessary to stick with assembly to truly get anything decent out of it, so it's not quite as simple as just making something more modern and higher-level languages, which are generally less efficient and more resource-wasteful, that you might get away with on SDKs for some other consoles (I think I read something like that)?

 

Although, if it just gives us more games, I'd have no problem with people at least having something available to make simple SNES titles that don't really do much to push the system. It wouldn't be the ideal solution imo, but it would absolutely be better if it at least gave us something more than the tiny trickle of new titles coming out for the console right now.

 

PVSNESlib is made by Alek Maul who also develops retail quality titles for Collectorvision including their Sydney Hunter series.  So, it can make at least commercial quality games.  Same with SecondBASIC made by Adam Welch of Second Dimension who has several published Genesis titles. 

 

Hope!

[Kirk_Johnston]

1 minute ago, Gemintronic said:

 

PVSNESlib is made by Alek Maul who also develops retail quality titles for Collectorvision including their Sydney Hunter series.  So, it can make at least commercial quality games.  Same with SecondBASIC made by Adam Welch of Second Dimension who has several published Genesis titles. 

 

Hope!

Cool. Then hopefully we start to see some more of those for SNES in the near future.

[Kirk_Johnston]

I tell you what I would have loved to have seen by now, and still hope for, is a version of SNESmaker made by the guys that made NESmaker: 

 

https://www.thenew8bitheroes.com/

 

Even if it would only allow for quite basic SNES titles, at least it would allow a whole lot of people to start making them actually pretty dang easily, all things being relative--because, honestly, that's about how simple/intuitive it needs to be in modern times imo--and I just want more brand new proper release SNES titles.

 

There was talk of them doing exactly that, but I've heard nothing on it for a long time, sadly:

 

I still have my fingers crossed for SNESmaker magically releasing in the not too distant future.

Edited September 27, 2022 by Kirk_Johnston

[+Gemintronic]

Ironically, Joe Granato of NESMaker seemed to be keen on the idea.  THEN he found that another guy had a similar SNES project going and put the breaks on.. THEN that guy stalled out on his project.  There's a chance Joe will move ahead again.  Fingers crossed.