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8-bit misconceptions -- a little rant


gamecat80

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The Turbografx-16, on the other hand, has an 8-bit data bus but graphics more reminiscent of 16-bit systems.

The TG-16 (PC Engine) port of Street Fighter II is graphically as good or better than the Genesis version, and its sound is much better than the Genesis, and is about on par with the SNES port:

 

 

Bits were a valuable yardstick in measuring the capabilities of a game system back in the 1980s and 1990s, but now not so much. I believe today's multi-core computers are just 64-bit, despite the fact that they're many times more powerful than early 64-bit systems like the Jaguar and N64.

"Bits" were never a valuable yardstick in measuring the capabilities of a game system back, they were just something that the Sega marketing department latched onto in order to have a buzzword to distinguish its new Genesis from the NES. Atari 2600, NES, and arcade Super Punch-Out were all "8-bit", even though each of those hardware platforms represents a drastically different level of capability. It is like if an '89 Geo Metro and a '71 Plymouth Hemi 'Cuda were both rated at X horsepower; that would render "horsepower" meaningless as a measure of engine power.

 

As for 64-bit consoles like the N64 and Jaguar, a decent 32-bit PC from the early 2000s, and especially from the mid-2000s could easily emulate those systems full speed at the same time as it was running Windows XP.

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Wow, I totally do NOT agree with you about the Turbografx version of Street Fighter II. The game is fine, but the music is ghastly, sounding as though it were played on a Casio keyboard with dying batteries. The music in the Genesis version of Street Fighter II is closest to the arcade version; the TG16 game sounds kind of cheesy and the Super NES, as always, goes overboard with the simulated instruments. The Genesis game plays better than either of them, largely due to a controller that's better suited to fighting games. (No, not that crap three button pad, the Sega Arcade Pad that came later.)

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The TG-16 (PC Engine) port of Street Fighter II is graphically as good or better than the Genesis version, and its sound is much better than the Genesis, and is about on par with the SNES port:

 

 

 

"Bits" were never a valuable yardstick in measuring the capabilities of a game system back, they were just something that the Sega marketing department latched onto in order to have a buzzword to distinguish its new Genesis from the NES. Atari 2600, NES, and arcade Super Punch-Out were all "8-bit", even though each of those hardware platforms represents a drastically different level of capability. It is like if an '89 Geo Metro and a '71 Plymouth Hemi 'Cuda were both rated at X horsepower; that would render "horsepower" meaningless as a measure of engine power.

 

As for 64-bit consoles like the N64 and Jaguar, a decent 32-bit PC from the early 2000s, and especially from the mid-2000s could easily emulate those systems full speed at the same time as it was running Windows XP.

 

Wow, that's an impressive port of SFII. The programmers squeezed every last drop of power out of each and everyone of those 12 PC-Engine bits.

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Wow, I totally do NOT agree with you about the Turbografx version of Street Fighter II. The game is fine, but the music is ghastly, sounding as though it were played on a Casio keyboard with dying batteries.

 

:lolblue: That's why I don't like the sound of most 16-bit systems (I know the TG-16, like the Intv, are "hybrid" systems). The sound of most TG-16, SNES, Genesis games - to me - sound 'tinny' ---- like a cheap electronic keyboard. Gimme the more simple/primitive, but fuller "analog-like" sound of most 8-bit systems anyday :!:

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Wow, I totally do NOT agree with you about the Turbografx version of Street Fighter II. The game is fine, but the music is ghastly, sounding as though it were played on a Casio keyboard with dying batteries. The music in the Genesis version of Street Fighter II is closest to the arcade version; the TG16 game sounds kind of cheesy and the Super NES, as always, goes overboard with the simulated instruments. The Genesis game plays better than either of them, largely due to a controller that's better suited to fighting games. (No, not that crap three button pad, the Sega Arcade Pad that came later.)

 

You aren't seriously comparing a peripheral Sega controller to a stock Nintendo one, are you?

 

When me and my friends first encountered the Sega Genesis port of SFII, after a year and a summer of playing our thumbs off on the SNES SFIIs, we literally burst out in laughter upon hearing the first hadoken. The voices on the Genesis version are comedy. We all knew (wink, wink), why the version for Genesis players was called "special".

 

Since then I have come to appreciate the good qualities of the Genesis version a little bit more. In fact, a little under half of the background music tracks are quite amazing, and better the SNES versions, by a bit, or two. But that still leaves over half the tracks superior on the SNES.

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Wow, I totally do NOT agree with you about the Turbografx version of Street Fighter II. The game is fine, but the music is ghastly, sounding as though it were played on a Casio keyboard with dying batteries. The music in the Genesis version of Street Fighter II is closest to the arcade version; the TG16 game sounds kind of cheesy and the Super NES, as always, goes overboard with the simulated instruments.

I'm not talking about the music, I'm talking about the sound effects and especially the speech. The Genesis SFII has laughably bad speech. The TG-16 and SNES speech and sound effects sound about the same, which is close enough to the arcade version. The music is okay on all 3 of them. I'm very familiar with the arcade version; I was already good at it, and it was my favorite arcade game at the time, before any home console versions were released, and then I bought an SNES specifically for its SFII port when it came out (I've also owned an actual Street Fighter II: The World Warrior arcade machine for several years now).

 

I was perfectly satisfied with it; my arcade skillset was instantly transferable to it (which means they got the gameplay/physics right), and I only noticed one sound effect that was significantly different than the arcade version: the sound of the fierce punch landing had more impact in the arcade version; the straight punch version of it from Ryu/Ken also had a bit more reach in the arcade version (note that I didn't specifically look for audio differences; if whatever differences existed didn't jump out at me then they didn't matter). I didn't notice any meaningful difference in any of the music (same deal as before; if it doesn't jump out at me it doesn't matter). The graphics were very close to the arcade version, especially when viewed on a CRT from a typical TV-viewing distance. The character sprites were a little smaller relative to the background.

 

The first time I saw the Genesis version was after I had already owned the SNES version for a while, and I just shook my head. The speech and sound effects were terrible, and the graphics weren't very good either (for the sake of comparison, if the arcade version was a typical photograph, the Genesis version looked like a 6-bit GIF version of it). I didn't bother to play it, because they only had the stock 3-button controllers, but I don't doubt that the gameplay was fine as long as you had a proper controller.

 

The Genesis game plays better than either of them, largely due to a controller that's better suited to fighting games. (No, not that crap three button pad, the Sega Arcade Pad that came later.)

The controller has nothing to do with inherent gameplay. You can get 6-button controllers for the TG-16 just as you could for the Genesis. The SNES already has a 6-button controller, but if you don't like the layout, you can buy or build a different solution for that as well.

Edited by MaximRecoil
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You aren't seriously comparing a peripheral Sega controller to a stock Nintendo one, are you?

 

When me and my friends first encountered the Sega Genesis port of SFII, after a year and a summer of playing our thumbs off on the SNES SFIIs, we literally burst out in laughter upon hearing the first hadoken. The voices on the Genesis version are comedy. We all knew (wink, wink), why the version for Genesis players was called "special".

 

Since then I have come to appreciate the good qualities of the Genesis version a little bit more. In fact, a little under half of the background music tracks are quite amazing, and better the SNES versions, by a bit, or two. But that still leaves over half the tracks superior on the SNES.

 

It wasn't a peripheral controller on the 32X or the Genesis 3... it came with those systems.

 

Yes, the Genesis originally came with a three button controller that didn't work well with fighting games (the kind of games that weren't popular until a year after the Genesis was released), but having to press the Super NES's shoulder buttons for heavy punch and heavy kick wasn't a picnic, either. And if you were a Genesis owner with any love for fighting games whatsoever, you'd have to be a little daft not to buy a proper controller for them. Frankly, NO controller for either the Super NES or the Turbografx-16 measured up to the Sega Arcade Pad, which ranks up there with the Japanese Saturn pad as the best controller ever for fighters.

 

I've heard all the jokes about the hoarse voices on the Genesis version of Street Fighter II, and no, they don't sound especially pleasant twenty years later. (The jokes or the voices.) The poor digitized speech doesn't ruin the game, or make it "special" as you've defined it. (Har de har har.) At the same time, it's hard to go back to the Genesis (or Super NES) version of SFII after the game was ported to a dozen more powerful systems. Even the Super NES game has an annoying metallic echo to many of its sound effects, that was cleaned up nicely on the 3DO, Saturn, and Playstation.

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It wasn't a peripheral controller on the 32X or the Genesis 3... it came with those systems.

The 32X itself was an add-on peripheral (not a "system"), and the Genesis 3 wasn't even made by Sega; it was made by Majesco, who licensed it from Sega after Sega had discontinued the Genesis. Considering that it was released in 1998, "a dollar short and a day late" is an understatement, which is no doubt why it was discontinued in 1999.

Edited by MaximRecoil
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I never know why the 3 button vs 6 button thing is even talked about, the second the 6 button controllers came out everyone had one. Course this is typically brought up by nintendo people who think that somehow being nearly 3 years later to the market makes them mystical futurists (this also applies to graphics and sound, sure SNES is better, its almost an entire console generation ahead in time)

Edited by Osgeld
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Isn't it great how retro sites like AtariAge let us fight these battles all over again?

 

Er, anyway. I don't think the number of bits a data bus can handle is meaningless, but it is just one piece of a large puzzle. It's also worth mentioning that you can put the same processor in three different game consoles and get three entirely different experiences, thanks to different video chips, sound chips, and amounts of RAM.

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Isn't it great how retro sites like AtariAge let us fight these battles all over again?

 

Er, anyway. I don't think the number of bits a data bus can handle is meaningless, but it is just one piece of a large puzzle. It's also worth mentioning that you can put the same processor in three different game consoles and get three entirely different experiences, thanks to different video chips, sound chips, and amounts of RAM.

It isn't meaningless in a technical sense, but it is meaningless as a measure of graphical performance. The Intellivision had a 16-bit CPU. Keeping that in mind, and comparing it to a Neo Geo, which also had a 16-bit CPU (or even to the NES or SMS, both of which had an 8-bit CPU), how much more meaningless can "bits" get as a measure of performance?

Edited by MaximRecoil
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The number of bits is not a complete measure of performance. So many other things to look at. I had a far superior experience putting a 68000 in my Apple II than I did using an entire complete Amiga setup.

 

Which incidentally I think I finally discovered the 3 real reasons why I hated the amiga so much.

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The sound of most TG-16, SNES, Genesis games - to me - sound 'tinny' ---- like a cheap electronic keyboard. Gimme the more simple/primitive, but fuller "analog-like" sound of most 8-bit systems anyday :!:

I take it you've never used them on a decent sound system?

 

It is the stupid generation that thinks pre-nes is 4-bit. The generation I come from, the smart generation, and generations before it, are simply smarter.

Uh, I saw people referring to the 2600 as "4-bit" back in the late 90s, back when people in your generation were probably in their 20s. Edited by ApolloBoy
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Isn't this what basically wikipedia used for its generations? because people though consoles before NES that brought us Jesus were all not 8-bit machines? I even read a linked article on the NES page that said "Before the NES does not matter. To be exact Video games were created in japan, no one brought video games otuside a few thousand people before the japanese brough the NES to America"

 

Also i tried to use tons of new papaer scans, posters and texts to thancge the genreations around to at least have all the late "2nd" consoles in third but I had to do it in the talk page lol.

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Uh, I saw people referring to the 2600 as "4-bit" back in the late 90s, back when people in your generation were probably in their 20s.

People were commonly guessing that the Atari 2600 was "4-bit" or even "2-bit" as far back as "16-bit" and "8-bit" becoming household terms in the late '80s. It was a simple, albeit uninformed, deduction, i.e., if the latest and greatest is 16-bit, and the NES and SMS are 8-bit, then what came before must have been 4-bit and/or 2-bit. That was my guess back then, except I figured the ColecoVision and Atari 5200 must have been 4-bit and the Atari 2600 must have been 2-bit, and my friends thought that sounded about right to them. Most kids didn't know how meaningless "bitness" really was.

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I take it you've never used them on a decent sound system?

 

 

Doesn't matter. Those 16-bit systems (including TG-16) have a distinctive sound. They generally sound tinny and metallic......like they were done on a low-dollar Casio keyboard. And the Genesis is the worst offender of them...

Everyone has preferences. I prefer the 8-bit sound; especially on some of the arcades. But I'm sure some here would think they are too "primitive", and would prefer the tinny, metallic 16-bit generation sound...

And I play my games completely thru regular TVs; not sound systems.

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It is safe to say that while systems with 16-sound are supposed to be superior to 8-bit, how the sound was generated makes a huge difference. It seems sampling and recording was a big thing in the mid-to late 80's. Both in pop music and in videogames. And much of this happened (and came to be) on 16-bit systems.

 

I much preferred the sound of pure FM synthesis from simple waveform generators; especially compared against the rough, tinny, staticky, artificial sample.

 

I suppose this was even evident pop music's 1st electronic percussion & drum sets, not so much the quality, but in the overall sound and it's shape.

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Wow, I totally do NOT agree with you about the Turbografx version of Street Fighter II. The game is fine, but the music is ghastly, sounding as though it were played on a Casio keyboard with dying batteries. The music in the Genesis version of Street Fighter II is closest to the arcade version;

 

 

Yeah, the PC Engine version of Street Fighter II is a commendable version. The graphics are very nice, definitely a step above the Genesis version (no thanks to the system's higher on-screen color palette, surely). In regards to the sound though, I agree--I can't stand the sound (musically speaking) of the PC Engine version, as is the case for many Turbo Grafx/PC Engine games. It's a very scratchy sound that's never been that appealing to me. I prefer the warmer sounds of the Genesis (when it's done right, there are too many poor examples on the system), in particular Street Fighter II CE's music. Like you mentioned, it's very close to the arcade, and that's an important factor for me as well.

 

On a side note, in reply to some of the later responses after this above post, I don't think whether six button controllers had to be bought separately or not should be a consideration in the conversation, particularly Sega's own six-button pad from the early '90s (which is absurdly common and far exceeds the original three-button pad in comfort and utility, and that's not taking into account Majesco's take on the same controller a few years later). However, for those that do care, the PC Engine six-button pads are kind of pricey, and for people like me that makes the PCE version of Street Fighter II sit at the bottom of the list when comparing between multiple versions. However, for those that want to fork out the cash for a proper PCE six-button controller (and have a Turbo DUO or Japanese PCE system that has the ports for those types of controllers, along with the actual SFII CE card or a Turbo Everdrive), then it's definitely a good version you can get from that era.

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Maybe it would be best to granulate and divide where these bits are.

 

Graphics

Souind

CPU

Memory

DataBus

 

..because, clearly, different parts can be mixed and matched. Because my PC has a 512 bit-wide bus on the video subsystem, does that mean my PC is 512 bits? OR 64 bits because it has a 64 bit processor. Or maybe 384 bits because it has 6 cores.

 

Traditionally # bits is determined by one CPU core. In the future this won't be adequate enough, as if it is now!?!

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