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The Sega Genesis and colors

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Grasshopper:
I didn’t own a Genesis or a SNES back in the day, so I hope I’m reasonably neutral on this issue.

Anyway, FWIW, I don’t think there’s much difference between the two platforms in practice. In terms of overall capabilities, and game quality, I tend to bracket them together.

A palette of 512 colours vs a palette of 32,768 colours might sound like a huge difference, but in practice it’s only really relevant if you’re trying to create photo-realistic images. For the simple cartoon graphics that were used by most SNES and Genesis games, it’s pretty much irrelevant.

However, I think it’s fair to say that, very broadly speaking, Genesis games tended to have a more gritty and adult feel to them, whereas SNES games tended to aim for a more ‘cute’ aesthetic (although there are plenty of exceptions to that rule on both platforms). For that reason, Genesis developers tended to pick a more subdued palette for their games compared to their SNES counterparts. However, that’s simply a design choice, and doesn’t really say anything about the capabilities of the underlying hardware.

Malenko:

--- Quote from: Grasshopper on December 08, 2021, 07:35:07 am ---I didn’t own a Genesis or a SNES back in the day, so I hope I’m reasonably neutral on this issue.

--- End quote ---
I'm neutral for the other reason, I had them both and loved them both. I whole heartedly agree with everything you wrote. The issue with comparing the 2 systems is when the people who have a bias for one or the other attack the platform they dislike. 

lilshawn:
i was a nintendo kid and my friends where sega so we both played both systems all the time... from nes/snes/n64 and on... and them with the master system/genesis/saturn etc.

given the demographics of the people using the systems, nintendo catered mostly to younger kids with the games because nintendo made the systems cheap and readily available which made the systems appealing with the parents purchasing them....while the sega went more older kids...teen and adult, both companies targeting their games at those people buying their systems.

it took a while for nintendo to start pushing out older kid/adult content on their systems. i think it took a while for them to realize that segregating themselves to a narrow demographic of user was hurting their system/game sales. once they started pushing teen and up content,  it really saw the system sales explode past the 60 million unit count. while sega was less than 1/10th that. by the time the SNES and the genesis hit the streets, most players found their niche and sega was closing the gap with 30 million genesis sales vs almost 50 million on the SNES. the cheap price of these systems (usually ~100 bucks) over the previous generation, really helped adoption of one system or the other.

overall the game selections was good on both sides with each having good flagship products... the main complaint between the systems ends up being nintendos censoring of games (removing blood from games by changing it to "sweat" or "slime" or not having a game released on the system becasue it was tOo ViOlEnT)

overall i think each system found their niche for the audience it was marketing to. which is why you saw nintendo went all cartoony with their in-house games to grab that preteen demographic, but brought things around to everyone else with 3rd party games.

unfortunately by the time the saturn rolled around late to the game half a year behind everyone else with it's $400 pricetag and a failed attempt at fixing the stopgap with the 32x addon which took almost as long to release as the saturn itself (and IIRC ended up being released at the same time for $199) versus the nintendo 64s $200 half the cost 6 moths beforehand... the new guy sony with the playstation at 300 was the console of choice that was the new happy medium... selling over 100 million units. the no holds barred game selections really helped sony here... basically killed sega as a console manufacturer.

at this point sega decided to throw in the towel and stick with arcade...not before tripping over the dreamcast on the way out. by now acrade had switched from dedicated hardware to PC componentry so TBH it really wasn't viable for sega to continue with consoles.

[/history]

pbj:
Here... of all places... you felt the need to type all that up....

 :cheers:

Malenko:

--- Quote from: pbj on December 10, 2021, 12:07:00 pm ---Here... of all places... you felt the need to type all that up....

 :cheers:

--- End quote ---
I felt like I was alive during the 90s thanks to that post.

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