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NES vs. Master System in terms of power
- Thread starter Phediuk
- Start date
People need to see the SMS version of Aladdin, it almost looks like a 16-bit game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWwgY2CVKTE
Still, the Master System library is criminally underrated. It has dozens of great games to play.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWwgY2CVKTE
Still, the Master System library is criminally underrated. It has dozens of great games to play.
I don't think you've ever played the SMS version of Mortal Kombat on actual hardware before. The characters flicker like crazy, especially Raiden when he does his flying torpedo
Just wanted to add that in the nordic countries, or at least in Sweden, that really wasn't the case. The NES was the console to own here, probably since we got it earlier (Q3 1986) than most other European countries thanks to a local importer/distributor being interested early on because of them having imported Game & Watch to Scandinavia previously. I actually didn't even know about the SMS until the internet came around. But the Mega Drive was very popular here. It didn't completely dominate the SNES though, which was also very popular.
Sorry it just bugs me when I hear that all of Europe was Sega territory when that wasn't the case at all where I grew up so I just had to add that.
All that said though, yes the SMS is clearly the more powerful system. That shouldn't be surprising since it came out 2 years after the Famicom. And since a lot of the games (maybe even most?) were coded by Sega themselves they of course became very good at optimizing for the hardware which made it even more apparent with time. The NES tried to make up for it with the mapper chips in the cartridges but nothing could change the fact that the colors and detail were for the most part much better on the SMS.
Speaking of enhancement chips, did Sega ever use something like that for the SMS or Mega Drive?
Bomber Bob
Banned
NES 4lyfe
TreasureHunterG
Banned
Here on Brazil, NES and SMS were both equally popular. Every gamers from that time or even someone who grew in it, knows who Alex Kidd is. But now, after all the years, you'll probably be mocked or spark a huge debate (which SMS constantly loose) if you say SMS had better games library than NES. Better hardware? Sure. But better games? Hell no. Japanese and western third-parties were mostly focused completely on the NES, thanks to Nintendo's policies at the time (and a reason for detractors to antagonize Nintendo), so the number of games avaliable for NES is way bigger than SMS.
For the same reason UK gamers may say SMS had better games than NES is fueled by the fact they berely knew about it's existence, so this opinion would sound one sided. Like asking for a japanese gamer which one was best, SNES or Genesis, when Genesis sold very badly around there, even worse than NEC PC-Engine. Sure, this works for US gamers, too, as many, probably, never saw a SMS in person.
Just wanted to add that in the nordic countries, or at least in Sweden, that really wasn't the case. The NES was the console to own here, probably since we got it earlier (Q3 1986) than most other European countries thanks to a local importer/distributor being interested early on because of them having imported Game & Watch to Scandinavia previously. I actually didn't even know about the SMS until the internet came around. But the Mega Drive was very popular here. It didn't completely dominate the SNES though, which was also very popular.
Sorry it just bugs me when I hear that all of Europe was Sega territory when that wasn't the case at all where I grew up so I just had to add that.
All that said though, yes the SMS is clearly the more powerful system. That shouldn't be surprising since it came out 2 years after the Famicom. And since a lot of the games (maybe even most?) were coded by Sega themselves they of course became very good at optimizing for the hardware which made it even more apparent with time. The NES tried to make up for it with the mapper chips in the cartridges but nothing could change the fact that the colors and detail were for the most part much better on the SMS.
Speaking of enhancement chips, did Sega ever use something like that for the SMS or Mega Drive?
They say the same about Brazil being dominated by Sega, too, which isn't true. NES and SNES were as popular, if not more, than both SMS and Genesis (Mega Drive, here). By that time, most retailers, rent stores and gaming magazines were dominated by Nintendo consoles. These revisionisms are often biased, often driven by Sony fanboys and Nintendo detractors, and looking to diminish Nintendo's impact on the history.
This doesn't sound like the UK I grew up in.
MrCunningham
Member
yeah, it is like a revised version of the Master System, as said before.
Though the Game Gear has superior colour pallet and can produce a much wider range of colours than the Genesis/ Mega Drive. Even though it can only roughly put only half the amount of colours on screen at once, the Game Gear has a 12-bit 4096 palette vs the Genesis 512 (potentially 1536 with shadow and highlights) palette. Sometimes Game Gear games actually look more vibrant than Genesis games because of this. Both the Lion King and Mega Man are great examples of this on the Game Gear. .
Mortal Kombat II
Game Gear:
Master System:
close to the same amount of colours on screen, but the Game Gear has a much nicer selection of colours. .
Though The NES can actually produce a wider range of colours than the Sega Master System, even though the Master System can put more on screen.
MoGamesXNA
Unconfirmed Member
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Starwolf_UK
Member
Does the FM synth module for the Mark 3 count here? Of course master system couldn't do that (so games with FM data had this removed, e.g. Phantasy Star).
As for Mega Drive games special chips. Virtua Racing is all that comes to mind (probably as a reaction to Star Fox/Star Wing). Maybe SEGA felt add-ons would be less appealing if stand alone games became just as good.
toddhunter
Member
Yeah but that was mainly 38000 different shades of purple.
MoGamesXNA
Unconfirmed Member
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CyberChulo
Member
I've always thought the SMS was better in terms of graphics but NES had Contra.
Master System was designed to be more powerful than the Nes, which it is. However, the difference isnt huge outside of the colours, and the music is arguably better on the Nes. Im sure the technical guys can elaborate.
Edit: The reason why the early Master System games looks worse than Nes is that they are designed for the Mark I which is inferior to both the Nes and Master System.
Edit: The reason why the early Master System games looks worse than Nes is that they are designed for the Mark I which is inferior to both the Nes and Master System.
I just remembered that there was also the brilliant idea to include extra controller ports on a few Mega Drive cartridges to make 4 player multiplayer possible. Not exactly an enhancement chip in that sense but very cool none the less.
dreamcastmaster
Banned
Sounds like you grew up in a different UK to everybody else.
This is correct, more or less.
IIRC, the Master System Convertor is just a straight 'pin to pin' converter, with no additional hardware needed.
Indeed. I grew up in the UK where SEGA was king.
What a glorious place.
In Germany we were the odd ones when having Sega systems. Didn't affect the fun, though
But I still can't believe the controller had no pause button and I don't know how often my parents pushed "Reset" instead of "Pause"
MrCunningham
Member
I guess if you really like using purple, NES is the way to go.
IrishNinja
Member
#TeamMasterSystem
I can understand Sega being stronger here back then (plenty of my friends had SMS and Mega Drives back then), but barely knowing of the NES' existence? Can't say that sounds even close to correct. I probably knew more people with a NES than a SMS back then.
Diehard Sega fan btw. So I hope my posts aren't coming across as Nintendo > *.
Nobody in the Uk bought a NES or SMS. It was all about the spectrum and C64 as well as the amiga/ST.
ResidentDante
Member
A lot of the SMS games look far better than most of the NES titles imo. Later in the SMS life the games were bordering on early Mega Drive games.
Here in Norway both the the NES and SMS were fairly prominent. The poorer kids, like myself, usually had the SMS as the console and games were cheaper priced. Though the NES dominated there was an okay number of SMS owners too. Sega dominated the rental market here though, at least where I lived. You could rent tons of SMS games; cards and cartridges!
The SNES and Mega Drive changed towards the Nintendo dominance though, far more SNESes around. I loved visiting family in England at the time, Sega was king there and I liked their whole attitude far more than Nintendo's!
Here in Norway both the the NES and SMS were fairly prominent. The poorer kids, like myself, usually had the SMS as the console and games were cheaper priced. Though the NES dominated there was an okay number of SMS owners too. Sega dominated the rental market here though, at least where I lived. You could rent tons of SMS games; cards and cartridges!
The SNES and Mega Drive changed towards the Nintendo dominance though, far more SNESes around. I loved visiting family in England at the time, Sega was king there and I liked their whole attitude far more than Nintendo's!
I have the real carts for MK1-3 for both the Master System and the Game Gear. Sounds to me like you don't know what causes flicker, considering you chose the one example of a move that would cause crazy flicker. Flicker is caused by too many sprites on the same horizontal scanline. Raiden's torpedo is the perfect move to induce flicker because his entire sprite is drawn horizontally on the same scanline. Sub-zero's freeze move is another move that causes flicker because his freeze sprite is made up of too many sprites at the same time. But the vast majority of moment-to-moment gameplay? No, Mortal Kombat does not "flicker like crazy" like you are claiming. Certainly not like it should considering the size of these "sprites."
The SMS can play FM music fine, they just never released an official adapter in the west. You can, today, either mod your SMS to play FM Music, or my pal TmEE makes a plugin for the back cart slot of the SMS that'll enable FM Music as well. Additionally, the japanese SMS (as in, not the mark III, but the actual japanese sega master system) has the FM unit built in.
Further, most games did not remove their FM Music when they came over. Phantasy Star is a unique exception. There are even western games, that never released in japan, that have never-heard FM music because the west didn't get the FM adapter. Outrun 3-D is an example of a SMS game never released in japan that has FM music.
The game gear had Gunstar Heroes. No NES contra game comes close to that.
Would love to read this, you got a link?
Actually this really is the case, most people are surprised when they hear there was a predecessor to the SNES. Also much of the SMS sales came after 1990 as a poor-man's (literally) choice to the Mega Drive.I can understand Sega being stronger here back then (plenty of my friends had SMS and Mega Drives back then), but barely knowing of the NES' existence? Can't say that sounds even close to correct. I probably knew more people with a NES than a SMS back then.
Diehard Sega fan btw. So I hope my posts aren't coming across as Nintendo > *.
I do remember the GRIN devs saying how they have strong nostalgic feelings towards the original BC games and I was thinking it was a load of BS to get fans happy, guess not!
Freshmaker
I am Korean.
Yea, I definitely recall the Master System hanging around a lot longer than the NES once the 16bit consoles started up. I just recall the NES being more prominent prior to that. I actually knew what a Mega Drive was before I knew what a Master System was. Meanwhile I had a NES along with friends, would frequently see people with Gameboys at school, and I remember their being a huge Walkers competition where you could win various NES games by collecting a load of tokens on the back of the packets. I remember the TMNT game ad that seemed to run every few minutes with the two kids wondering who ate the last slice of pizza (lol), I remember seeing the NES demo setup in loads of electrical stores either running Mario or Duck Hunt, yet am not sure I ever saw a Master System demo station (plenty of Mega Drive ones though later). It's kinda blowing my mind to hear that my experiences seems to differ so much from other people growing up in the same place lol. Consoles were simply Nintendos as far as most people I knew were concerned.
As for the thread topic though, I don't think this comparison is even worthy of any real debate. The Master System was massively superior. It's not even close really. The difference is more Wii U to Xbox One, than it is Xbox 360 to PS3.
UncleSporky
Member
Heh, you wanna know what this is doing? It's not actually changing the palette on those scanlines. It's flipping some "color emphasis" bits to lean the colors toward grey and blue. IIRC it was one of the few things you could change mid-render on hblank. You don't have a lot of fine control while the screen is being drawn and it takes some really precise timing to be able to do effects like this. Not very many games used the emphasis bits, generally it was for fading the screen in and out, and some crappy famiclones screw it up altogether and fade white instead of black.
uncledonnie
Banned
Holy hell, how have I never seen this? Just watched the 7 force battle; incredibly impressive given the hardware.
Master system easily. Looking at exclusives the master system had more impressive games. Looking at multiplats, sms in all cases I can remember ran them better. For example double dragon is 1 player on nes but 2 player on master system.
Thr Master system is really unappriciated console to be honest. I had one as a kid and loved it. People dismiss it because in most of the world it wasnt as popular as the NES.
Thr Master system is really unappriciated console to be honest. I had one as a kid and loved it. People dismiss it because in most of the world it wasnt as popular as the NES.
This man gets it...
Most people are unfamiliar with the sega 8bit library. The last games on the platform were extremely impressive. Check out ristar, shining force the sword of hajya, gg aleste 2, tails adventure, dynamite headdy, and mega man.
Edit: the treasure games, dynamite headdy and gunstar heroes, were made by treasure themselves.
MrCunningham
Member
Dynamite Headdy has a Sega Master System version, it essentially was just the Game Gear port with a higher screen resolution and a slightly worse looking colour palette. Also, Gunstar Heroes wasn't ported by Treasure, it was done by another Japanese developer called M2, and it was never released outside of Japan, which makes it pretty obscure.
Tails Adventure has a Master System version too.
I know what causes flicker
You originally said the game has no flicker, then agreed with me that there is flicker, the posted a video showing flicker, although not the example we were discussing
I'm confused... You just killed your own argument. Regardless of character size, the game still flickers, and sometimes quite a lot.
It didn't distract me from loving the game however
I'm going to be "that guy" quickly, and point out that saying the game can draw two screen filling sprites with no flicker, isn't actually the same as saying there's never any flicker. If it draws them flicker-free until certain scenarios (like Raiden's torpedo) occur then it's able to draw two fullscreen characters with no flicker... even if that were only valid for certain character pairings.
"Flicker like crazy" definitely seems to be the bigger exaggeration based on the footage he posted (I've never seen it in person running on an actual console).
No it doesn't.
MrCunningham
Member
I could have sworn I have seen videos/ screenshots of this one running on the Master System. But it turns out there is fan made port floating around that was a conversion from the Game Gear game. I assumed it was a TecToy version of the game, or something.
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