Monday, 16 November 2009

• Genesis or SNES? What You Were Missing Out On

  
  And if you don't know, now you know...!

  If you were a late 80's, early 90's kid, chances are your parents could only afford the Genesis or the SNES, not both.

  I myself got the Super Nintendo in 1992 as a birthday present from my parents, who saw me so hyper and happy whenever I played the NES at a family friend's apartment. And following that was a number of games and peripherals on Christmas only months later. I was elated, but I began to feel left out since all the other kids at school had a Genesis. I was sheltered and didn't have much opportunity to hang out at friends' places till I was a few years older, so I was stuck with only games for my system. It was so refreshingly fun to play Sonic 2 and X-Men on my sorta-cousin's system whenever I visited him in New Jersey...

  Now that I'm older and more console savvy, I've realized that while I was in fact missing out on much of what I thought I was, the other kids wanted the SNES like me when they couldn't have it. Many of you a half decade younger than me probably went through something similar with the 32-bit era instead, but I'll cover that in another post.

  So here's what those of us who thought the 16-bit grass was greener on the other side of the console fence didn't get to experience...

  
  

  

  For those who didn't get an SNES:

  • Better graphics than the Genesis; more vibrant colors.
  • The SNES soundchip had more layers and a softer, more variable sound than the Genesis'.
  • A screaming buttload of RPGs.
  • Anything Mario or Kirby or Megaman X or Donkey Kong Country. F-Zero. Super Metroid. Contra III. ActRaiser. The Star Wars games. The Ninja Gaiden Trilogy. The better TMNT games. Super Castlevania IV. Tetris Attack. Sparkster. Cybernator, Metal Warriors. Star Fox. Battletoads in Battlemaniacs. U.N Squadron. SFII: Turbo. Ken Ripley Jr's Baseball. Doom. Jurassic Park 2: The Chaos Continues.
  • More games supported by the XBAND
  • Better light-gun games

  

  For those who didn't get a Genesis:

  • Weaker graphics were made up for by a smoother, flashier sense of motion; grainier pixels and flatter colors were less taxing on the system to allow for more frames of animation.
  • The much less advanced soundchip really suited grungier compositions. Great for games like Castlevania: Bloodlines.
  • Less RPGs was made up for with the excellence and exclusivity of the RPGs that were on the system.
  • Gunstar Heroes, Rocket Knight Adventures, the Streets of Rage series, the better Aladdin game, anything Sonic, the Shinobi series, Castlevania Bloodlines. X-Men. Beyond Oasis. Altered Beast. Comix Zone. Dynamite Headdy. Michael Jackson's Moonwalker. Ecco the Dolphin. The Mutant League games. Splatterhouse games. The Toejam & Earl games. Vector-Man and Vector-Man II. Valis. SFII: Championship Edition.
  • A faster, bloodier Mortal Kombat.
  • It was the cool kids' system.
  • The better light gun.
  • A hookup to the expensive but ballin' Sega CD, known for a number of excellent games.

  
  Hell, by extension, if you didn't get a Sega CD:

  • A spiffy CD player.
  • Sonic CD, Snatcher, Night Trap, Popful Mail, Ecco II, Lunar and Lunar II, Final Fight CD, and more.

  Were you one of the children forced to stick to only one console during the days of 16-bit? Did you regret not being able to play as much as you wanted on the other systems? Is there anything else you remember of these systems that I didn't cover?

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