most overrated video game problem

[nester]

I was packing all my video games for moving (again) and it got me thinking about gaming in general. I noticed that there are certain problems associated with certain systems that come up every time people talk about them. Some of these are true problems with the system while some of these don't really amount to much. What do you think is the most overrated video game problem?

 

I think it is the arguement that the cords to Dreamcast controllers come out the wrong end. I have spent a good amount of time playing Dreamcast, and I've honestly never noticed. It has a nice little notch for the cord to fit into, and this seems to work just fine. I don't know why this one has to come up every time someone mentions Dreamcast.

[VF-Gal]

I am not sure about the biggest but one overrating that always came up when games were tested for both, the MD and the SNES, was: "The mega drive with it*s limited color palette..."

 

with no doubt, when it comes to voice samples, the sound is definatly worlds away from the SNES, but the color palette?!

 

The MD can create wonderful graphics with it*s 512 color palette, actually even the 256 of the Master System can do great colorful landscapes and sprites. I don*t see where the big superiority in the SNES palette is, it of course has many more but mostly, Sega*s stuff looked more serious while Nintendo tended to over-use their candy colors. The magazine testers always acted like it was comparison like 8/16 Bit Graphics, and this ultimately put me off.

[gdement]

After reading about it on the internet, I've learned that the Genesis has bad sound. I never felt that way when the machine was current. This attitude seems to be based on comparisons with the SNES, which is almost 2 years newer.

 

The SNES' wavetable sound was one of it's most eccentric features and really doesn't diminish the Genesis in my book. The Genesis sounds like a 16-bit era arcade machine. As such, it sounds a bit unrefined, but it's very fitting for the kind of games Sega had in mind. The SNES is prettier though, which works well for Final Fantasy.

[Phineasfool]

That the Jaguar has a horrible controller. It's actually one of the more comfortable ones I've used. Probably one of the few where I can play for hours and not start to get cramps.

[kevincal]

People ALWAYS complain about the blinky NES problem that most NES' have. For me, it usually takes a minute or 2 to get problem games to work. I have never failed to get an NES game to work.

[thomasholzer]

Mine's not so much a problem, but a statement:

 

"My computer/console is better than yours".

 

I was told this in the 80s, when some guy told me 'his C-64 is better than my Atari XL".

I asked him if he ever used an Atari XL, on which he commented "No".

So how on earth does he know which one's better?

Most useless statement ever.

 

Happened again later with Genesis/SNES. I, of course, was the Genesis user, my neighbour was a SNES gamer. Same statement occurred, same question I asked back, same answer I got. Aren't people stupid!!!!!

 

I rest my case!!!!!

Edited September 2, 2006 by thomasholzer

[jferio]

Except for hardwired controllers, it always gets me when people complain about the controllers for systems. In most cases, using something third-party, or building (or having built for you) a unique controller fixes that problem right up.

[carpecarne]

For me its:

 

"The 2600 only has 5 available characters! WTF, mate?"

 

Or currently, "The Wii has no HIdef?! What the eff?"

[NE146]

"The non-centering 5200 controllers" is a big hyped problem. Truth is it isn't THAT bad. I even play Pacman & MsPac great with them. But, their "breaking" is indeed a true issue

[LocalH]

After reading about it on the internet, I've learned that the Genesis has bad sound. I never felt that way when the machine was current. This attitude seems to be based on comparisons with the SNES, which is almost 2 years newer.

 

The SNES' wavetable sound was one of it's most eccentric features and really doesn't diminish the Genesis in my book. The Genesis sounds like a 16-bit era arcade machine. As such, it sounds a bit unrefined, but it's very fitting for the kind of games Sega had in mind. The SNES is prettier though, which works well for Final Fantasy.

Well, the YM2612 was heavily underutilized by Sega. For example, earlier games that used sound samples would dedicate the Z80 to playing back sample data, while the 68k would handle the rest of the FM and PSG channels. Later games moved to a Z80-only driver, which lowered the quality of the sample output. This is especially why SSF2 has such horrible sample output.

[JB]

I think it is the arguement that the cords to Dreamcast controllers come out the wrong end. I have spent a good amount of time playing Dreamcast, and I've honestly never noticed. It has a nice little notch for the cord to fit into, and this seems to work just fine. I don't know why this one has to come up every time someone mentions Dreamcast.

A. The clip can't be used if you have a jump pack installed. The retaining clip gets in the way.

B. It's not really that they come out the wrong side as much as they're just too short. In my case, having the cord exit the other side of the controller would have made them BARELY long enough.

 

I am not sure about the biggest but one overrating that always came up when games were tested for both, the MD and the SNES, was: "The mega drive with it*s limited color palette..."

 

with no doubt, when it comes to voice samples, the sound is definatly worlds away from the SNES, but the color palette?!

 

The MD can create wonderful graphics with it*s 512 color palette, actually even the 256 of the Master System can do great colorful landscapes and sprites. I don*t see where the big superiority in the SNES palette is, it of course has many more but mostly, Sega*s stuff looked more serious while Nintendo tended to over-use their candy colors. The magazine testers always acted like it was comparison like 8/16 Bit Graphics, and this ultimately put me off.

I'm not denying the Genesis has some nice graphics, but the SNES is generally regarded as being vastly superior in that regard, and the color pallete is the primary reason.

 

The Genny's official limit of ... I think it was 58... colors at once was quite restrictive, and both Nintendo and 3rd parties made maximum use of the SNES' larger 256 of 32k colors. Partially for antialiasing to reduce the effect of the SNES' lower display resolution, but mostly just for adding detail.

 

Both official maximums were bypassable with hardware trickery(or just activating the SNES' transparency effects), and it's possible to get the entire pallete on one screen with both systems, though probably not practical in an actual game.

 

After reading about it on the internet, I've learned that the Genesis has bad sound. I never felt that way when the machine was current. This attitude seems to be based on comparisons with the SNES, which is almost 2 years newer.

 

The SNES' wavetable sound was one of it's most eccentric features and really doesn't diminish the Genesis in my book. The Genesis sounds like a 16-bit era arcade machine. As such, it sounds a bit unrefined, but it's very fitting for the kind of games Sega had in mind. The SNES is prettier though, which works well for Final Fantasy.

Well, the YM2612 was heavily underutilized by Sega. For example, earlier games that used sound samples would dedicate the Z80 to playing back sample data, while the 68k would handle the rest of the FM and PSG channels. Later games moved to a Z80-only driver, which lowered the quality of the sample output. This is especially why SSF2 has such horrible sample output.

There's also a lot of nasty issues where they try to use the FM chip in places where the PSG is far better suited.

Usually with explosions and the like, which would benefit greatly from the noise channel. FN synth explosions tend to sound sort of like a cymbal crash, if I recall.

 

The big thing that hurts the Genny is it has a lousy analog side, at least on the Mk1 decks. It does some nasty stuff to the sound before it ever makes it to your ears.

 

 

 

 

 

I'm with NE146, though. The 5200 sticks get a bum rap.

[Video]

The genesis lack of a color palate won't hurt games, if the people making the games tries to select a good one. The problem is, the Genny can only show like 64 colors at once, out of a palate of 512. Yes, there are tricks to push all the colors at once, but if you'll note, not in gameplay. While the SNES has a palate of 32,000 colors, and can show 256 Natively, during gameplay. Same here, a game could be rendered pretty crappy looking by a bad palate choice. But the fact is, the SNES simply had better color capabilitys than the Genesis.

 

But the color wasn't the issue IMO, the Sound was what you'd notice first, especially on like games. It was often tinny, and 8 bit ish compared to the SNES' s supperior sound capabilitys. As someone mentioned, especially in certain instances, such as explosions.

 

I think the biggest thing for me though, was the Jaguar Pad. People always and diss it because it's uncomfertable and crappy? WTF?!? I've never had problems with it personally, and it's the first controller I truely fell in love with, because it's attempt at ergonomical, far better than previous nonexistant attempts. I think the real reason that it was dissed is that so few people could get one, adn they hated it for that. But considering two of the four last consoles had Jag style, or inspired pads, that means someone didn't think it sucked to bad.

 

Another overhyped problem, was the GameBoy's (original DMG) monochrom Pea soup Screen. The fact is, back then, it was actually quiet good for that size of monochrome screen, and people seem to have forgotten that almost every color system also had infinate smear at any respectable gameplay speed. I personally considered the GB screen as one of the better ones, despite the monochrome and lack of backlight. Yes, it's shades of green, and yes it smears on faster games, but as I said, which late 80's early 90's handheld didn't. (I hear the Turbo express is quiet good, but how many actually had one back then?) If you had problems, you could adjust it to a useable level.

[LocalH]

The Genny's official limit of ... I think it was 58... colors at once was quite restrictive, and both Nintendo and 3rd parties made maximum use of the SNES' larger 256 of 32k colors. Partially for antialiasing to reduce the effect of the SNES' lower display resolution, but mostly just for adding detail.

61 colors. Four lines of 16 colors each, with entry $0 of each line only usable as a backdrop color (treated as transparent for tile and sprite display). But, the Genesis excelled at making single-pixel dithering look much more colorful, and I think that's a major part of what hurts the Genesis when looking back on it - most people (at least in the US, anyway) played using composite video at best, and so when they see a game running under emulation, the single-pixel dither gives the image a "grainy" look. Genesis games really can look more colorful (and thus, arguably better) on a standard RF signal than on crisp RGB.

 

Both official maximums were bypassable with hardware trickery(or just activating the SNES' transparency effects), and it's possible to get the entire pallete on one screen with both systems, though probably not practical in an actual game.

Yeah, it's fairly simple to change the pallet mid-frame and gain additional colors. The mainstream Sonic games are famous for using this technique in water levels (and as you can only change 8 colors per scanline, they placed water sprites on top of the split so as to hide garbage - the reason the water sprites flicker is because they use a technique siimilar to OAM cycling on the NES in order to get the full width of the screen covered without cutting gaps into sprites that appear below it, as the VDP can only display 320 pixels of sprite data per scanline). The Genesis also has a shadow/highlight mode which further increases the number of colors onscreen (for example, in Sonic 3's special stage, Sonic's shadow is made with this mode).

Edited September 2, 2006 by LocalH

[8th lutz]

There are a couple that come to mind.

 

The technical comparisions between the snes and the genesis. From a technical standpoint the snes was better like it should be with the snes came out 2 years after the genesis. While the graphics weren't as good on the genesis, it was a faster system and some type of games on the snes weren't as good as they were on the genesis like sports games and shooters. What happened to the snes was the system had more colors, its lack of speed compared to the genesis hurted the snes. Genesis had games that had great sound like in Shinobi 3.

 

The over hyped gamecube format problem. It was not on dvd, but how many games needed 2 dics for gamecube. There was not a bunch of rpgs compared to the genesis, and the type of games gamecube had, this was not a issue for the most part.

Edited September 2, 2006 by 8th lutz

[AtticGamer]

The Snes slow processor, I never noticed games slower than other systems, 3.57 MHZ was fine to run some of the best games ever made.

[Vic George 2K3]

Only Gradius 3 really showed any slowdowns, to my knowledge.

[Bill Brasky]

People ALWAYS complaining about the Colecovision joysticks, as if there were no alternatives or 3rd party joysticks available.

 

People who complained that the CV was expensive or that you had to be rich to afford it when the Atari 2600 and others cost much more when new.

 

People who complain how wide and huge the Jag pad is. If you measure it, it isn't any wider than a PSX pad and isn't bigger than the Xbox, N64, DC or GC controllers.

 

People who complain about the Lynx's size and battery life and then rave over the Nomad.

 

The notion that the N64 was limited somehow by using carts instead of cd's. If carts mean less stupid animated studio/publisher/developer logo sequences or boring GCI cutscenes I have to sit through, BRING ON THE CARTS! They fit all of RE2 video into a cart. Who really misses that CGI cutscene crap anyway? And N64 games weren't way more expensive than new PS or Saturn games.

 

The ADAM being "unreliable". Why are there so many working ADAMs available on Ebay 21-22 years later?

 

Xbox pad is sooooo HUGE.

 

Virtual Boy damaging your eyes.

 

Bally Astrocades overheat

 

INTV II, not being able to disconnect the controllers when you really can.

 

"The 32X has no good games"

 

"The 32X is soooo hard to hookup"

 

"All the good Saturn games are imports"

 

Nintendo fanboys trying to make a big deal over the fact their system had FOUR, count-em, 4 controller inputs and the others didn't.

 

N64 fanboys complaining about loadtimes on other systems.

[shadow460]

 

I don't see a problem at all here. The cord is touching the official Sega Jump Pack, but it is not pushing the loking tab in at all.

 

Hmm,

 

The Pro Line stick. I don't know why people would hate it. A CX-40B hurts my hands more, and that's quite bearable. The stock NES pads are way harder on my hands than any Atari controller.

 

Gamboy DMG screen=junk. No it doesn't. It's not stellar, but it gets the job done. Even the color gameboy I own displays near monochrome on classic game boy titles.

 

N64 pads and joystick wear: This is not an issue if you take care of them. I've got three stock pads with good, tight joysticks in them.

 

Dual Shock 2 problems: See above.

CX-40B problems: See above.

 

ET sucks: No it doesn't. It's actually a pretty decent game if you take the time to get into it. The game I don't like is Pac-Man, and that goes for the arcade version, too.

[pocketmego]

The 7800 controller being poorly designed. I sat here and played the thing all day , since I got my 7800 today and haven't had a bit of trouble. Doesn't feel any more cumbersome or uncomfortable than any other Atari era Joystick I've used.

 

-Ray

[JB]

The Genny's official limit of ... I think it was 58... colors at once was quite restrictive, and both Nintendo and 3rd parties made maximum use of the SNES' larger 256 of 32k colors. Partially for antialiasing to reduce the effect of the SNES' lower display resolution, but mostly just for adding detail.

61 colors. Four lines of 16 colors each, with entry $0 of each line only usable as a backdrop color (treated as transparent for tile and sprite display). But, the Genesis excelled at making single-pixel dithering look much more colorful, and I think that's a major part of what hurts the Genesis when looking back on it - most people (at least in the US, anyway) played using composite video at best, and so when they see a game running under emulation, the single-pixel dither gives the image a "grainy" look. Genesis games really can look more colorful (and thus, arguably better) on a standard RF signal than on crisp RGB.

That makes the Genesis a lot like the PS1.

Dithering out the wazoo.

 

And, of course, the higher resolution would make dithering more effective than on other lower-res machines.

 

 

Both official maximums were bypassable with hardware trickery(or just activating the SNES' transparency effects), and it's possible to get the entire pallete on one screen with both systems, though probably not practical in an actual game.

Yeah, it's fairly simple to change the pallet mid-frame and gain additional colors. The mainstream Sonic games are famous for using this technique in water levels (and as you can only change 8 colors per scanline, they placed water sprites on top of the split so as to hide garbage - the reason the water sprites flicker is because they use a technique siimilar to OAM cycling on the NES in order to get the full width of the screen covered without cutting gaps into sprites that appear below it, as the VDP can only display 320 pixels of sprite data per scanline). The Genesis also has a shadow/highlight mode which further increases the number of colors onscreen (for example, in Sonic 3's special stage, Sonic's shadow is made with this mode).

So THAT'S why the water surface flickers!

 

And I didn't know the Genny had a hardware shadow effect. That's actually pretty neat.

 

 

Only Gradius 3 really showed any slowdowns, to my knowledge.

I've been hit by slowdown in a lot of stuff. Including Zelda.

Gradius 3 just has the ugliest example(Whee, we can't even scroll the map without overtaxing the system!).

[LocalH]

So THAT'S why the water surface flickers!

 

And I didn't know the Genny had a hardware shadow effect. That's actually pretty neat.

Yep. When you pause, the game switches to just showing 320 pixels of water sprites with no flickering. If you notice, during pause, sprites that are on the same lines as the water simply disappear on those lines:

 

Those two are the alternation frames for when the game is running.

 

This is the game when paused. Notice that part of Sonic is completely missing.

[Flojomojo]

I think the suckiness of the Intellivision disc controllers is overblown. I kinda liked these controllers when they were new.

[gdement]

After reading about it on the internet, I've learned that the Genesis has bad sound. I never felt that way when the machine was current. This attitude seems to be based on comparisons with the SNES, which is almost 2 years newer.

 

The SNES' wavetable sound was one of it's most eccentric features and really doesn't diminish the Genesis in my book. The Genesis sounds like a 16-bit era arcade machine. As such, it sounds a bit unrefined, but it's very fitting for the kind of games Sega had in mind. The SNES is prettier though, which works well for Final Fantasy.

Well, the YM2612 was heavily underutilized by Sega. For example, earlier games that used sound samples would dedicate the Z80 to playing back sample data, while the 68k would handle the rest of the FM and PSG channels. Later games moved to a Z80-only driver, which lowered the quality of the sample output. This is especially why SSF2 has such horrible sample output.

 

I'm confused about that. Altered Beast and Golden Axe both stop playing sounds when they're busy playing speech. I figured this was because the Z-80 was occupied full time with the speech, and so the rest of the sound got dropped. If the 68k handles the other sounds, then why does it drop out? Maybe this is just unique to those games, I don't really remember which other games, if any, behave that way.

 

I've often thought that the older games had better sound, but I figured that was just my imagination. Maybe not.

[ninjarabbit]

 

The notion that the N64 was limited somehow by using carts instead of cd's. If carts mean less stupid animated studio/publisher/developer logo sequences or boring GCI cutscenes I have to sit through, BRING ON THE CARTS! They fit all of RE2 video into a cart. Who really misses that CGI cutscene crap anyway? And N64 games weren't way more expensive than new PS or Saturn games.

 

I 100% agree with this one. I remember Sony and Square bragging about how it would have cost like $1200 per cart to fit FFVII on the N64 but in reality the game itself only took up one disc (you can play the game itself using one disc but the FMVs will get messed) and the other discs were basically for FMVs.

 

Another thing is the complaint of all pre-GBA SP Nintendo handhelds not having backlights for the screens, that's why all those sytems had such great battery life. My one complaint about the DS is that it 'only' lasts 6-10 hours before you have to recharge it (still better than the PSP).

[Gregory DG]

I'll agree with some of the controller sentiments. Especially about the Jaguar controller. I can't believe it ends up being #1 on all the "Worst Controller Ever lists" especially since there are MANY worse controllers out there. Of course, if the listmaker actually tried the Jagpad, he'd have a different opinion.

 

I've never had a problem using my Dreamcast jump pack (Madcatz, got 'em for $2) and clipping the cord either.

 

The 7800 joystick is not NEARLY as bad as the 5200 one. Not even close. The 7800 stick is far more reponsive (IMO) than the 2600 one. Plus it has two buttons. And you can play it left or right-handed. Plus you actually GOT a joystick with the 7800, unlike the SMS or NES that gave you tiny gamepads.