Key Learnings

Here are the top learnings I observed during this effort.

Super Nintendo

  1. Ahead of their Time - The SNES was an incredible console with a revolutionary and innovative controller, but the technology wasn't ready for a number of genres. The Strategy, Education, Racing, Flight Simulators, and first-person shooter genres were affected heavily by the Super Nintendo’s constraints. After all, this was several years before full motion video, true 3D environments, and analog controls would appear on home consoles. It makes you wonder why developers even tried in some of these categories. Then again, Nintendo themselves were able to string together genre-defining Strategy (SimCity), Education (Mario Paint), Racing (F-Zero), and Flight Sim (Pilotwings) titles, so it was certainly possible.
  2. Lots of hidden gems - There are a lot of good games that I either don't remember or have never given a proper chance. Games like Lufia 2 and Run Saber are awesome, but not well-known, while the likes of Inspector Gadget, Mr. Nutz, Street Racer, and Top Gear 3000 have been in my blindspot for 25+ years.
  3. Over- and under-represented genres - I mean, come on, we all knew there would be a ton of platformers, but why are there 7 fishing games on the SNES? That’s 1% of the entire library. There were 42 1v1 fighting games. Did we really need that many alternatives to Street Fighter II? Meanwhile, there were only 32 total puzzle games which includes 6 game show titles. There was a seemingly endless supply of puzzle titles for the Game Boy so why were there so few SNES games in the genre?
  4. Not as many RPGs as I had thought - Speaking of which, the SNES is fondly remembered as an RPG powerhouse, but it turns out that there are only 27 total and only 15 of those are JRPGs. In other words, RPGs make up only 3.8% of the system’s library. Several of those JRPGs are stone-cold classics, but anyway you look at it, there aren’t many of them. The Super Famicom’s library was absolutely flush with RPGs but the SNES had more quality than quantity going for it.
  5. Not many shoot-em-ups either - To be fair, the SNES isn’t revered as the place to go to play a 16-bit shoot-em-up; the Genesis and TG-16 rightfully vie for that title. Even so, this was the early 90s when shmups were in their prime so you’d expect there to be a good representation on the console. Only 21 of these buggers showed up on the SNES, including only seven vertical scrolling shooters.
  6. A plethora of sports titles, but few worth playing - One genre that was well-represented on the SNES was Sports. A total of 138 games appeared on the console which is just under 1/5th of all games in the library (19.3% to be exact). How many of those 138 games score higher than 70? Only 14. That means that only 10% of the sports games are what I consider “good” games. For perspective, there are almost as many JRPGs (10 of them) as there are Sports titles which scored over 70. Put another way, two-thirds of all JRPGs on the system are Good compared to only 10% of Sports titles.
  7. Nintendo released some of the worst sports games ever on the SNES - Alright, Super Tennis is a veritable classic and the Griffey baseball games are alright, but how about NCAA Basketball (scored a 38), Super Soccer (34), NHL Stanley Cup (16), and Super Play Action Football (13)? That collection puts Nintendo up there with Black Pearl/T*HQ or Mindscape as one of the worst sports game publishers on the SNES.
  8. Konami peaked in 1992 and then went downhill quickly from there - Games released by Konami before mid-1993 which scored 80+: Contra 3, TMNT IV, Castlevania IV, Legend of the Mystical Ninja, Axelay, Cybernator, Batman Returns, and Gradius 3. Amazing. After mid-1993: Dracula X, Metal Warriors (developed by LucasArts), and Sunset Riders. Yep, that's it.
  9. Capcom was the exact opposite - Konami peaked early while Capcom was a late bloomer. The House of Mega Man had only four games which scored 80+ in 1991-1992 but made 10 more from 1993 onward.
  10. Predictability is the most important quality in a game - Having played every SNES game ever made I’ve come to believe that predictability is the single most important quality to determine whether or not a video game is “good”. What do I mean by “predictability”? Well, predictability can be observed in a variety of ways, such as hit detection, AI, and “lag.” Put simply, can you, as the player, accurately predict what will happen while playing the game? Will I take damage when my character touches that sprite? Is that a platform or a background element? How high and how far will I travel when I press the jump button? How will that enemy behave? A game is only enjoyable when these, and many other questions, have understandable and consistent answers.
  11. The SNES sound chip is amazing - There are a lot of SNES games with iconic soundtracks, like Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy III, ActRaiser, and Castlevania IV, to name a few, but I was surprised by how many games had a bopping soundtrack. The Sony-designed sound chip in the SNES was able to produce some incredible sounds! Otherwise unremarkable games like Lagoon, Mr. Nutz, Paladin’s Quest, and Top Gear had tracks worth listening to. I was genuinely disappointed when a game didn’t include a sound test so that I could explore its soundtrack.

Sega Genesis

  1. Western developed - Have I mentioned recently how much I detest Western-developed games? “Western developed” is forever etched in my brain now as a derogatory term; a meme; a veritable guarantor of piss poor quality. It reminds me of the scene from The Three Amigos where Carmen and her brother attempt to send a telegram to the Amigos but lack the funds to adequately describe how horrible, terrible, no-good, very bad El Guapo really is. The telegraph operator offers an alternative word - infamous. “Infamous?” Carmen asks. The operator replies, “It means murderous, evil. All like you said. And it will save you money.” “Western dev” is the 16-bit equivalent of “infamous”, and nowhere is this more abundantly clear than on the Sega Genesis.
  2. Amiga ports - Speaking of Western games, there were SO many games ported to the Genesis from the Commodore Amiga PC. I made an off-the-cuff estimate that 20% of the library came from Europe’s favorite home computer. Having looked it up it appears that there were about 190-230 games which crossed the pond. That’s one-quarter or one-third of the entire Genesis library! Oh and for the record, most of them are terrible. In fact, Electronic Arts ported most of those Amiga titles so I came to loathe seeing the EA logo. It almost always meant a horrible port was moments away from ruining my evening.
  3. Experimental, Novel, but not always Fun or Well-Crafted - The Genesis library can be summed up in three words - inferior, thin, and eclectic. Sega’s first-party library is particularly strange, with a number of games that defy genre norms. These titles leave a strong memory, but are not something you’d want to spend a lot of time with. “That’s different” doesn’t always lead to “that’s good.” Examples include Ecco the Dolphin, The Ooze, Comix Zone, ToeJam & Earl, Burning Force, Haunting, and Mutant League Football.
  4. Few hidden gems - On the SNES I found quite a few unheralded good games that I either didn't remember or had never given a proper chance. I identified 81 pleasant surprises with scores ranging from 97 to 67. On the Genesis, I only found 44. Going into this project I was expecting to find a lot of Genesis games because I was already so familiar with the SNES library. But alas, the low number of hidden gems simply reinforced the overall quality of the SNES library when compared to the Genesis.
  5. Over- and under-represented genres - It was really interesting to see the types of games on the Genesis vs the SNES. There are 20 more sports titles on the Genesis, which probably surprises no one, but there are also 9 fewer fighting games on Sega’s uncensored console. Interesting, no? How about these stats: there were 15 more action-gun and 10 more punch-n-kick titles on the Genesis. On the flipside, there were only 14 total RPGs and of those only 5 were JRPGs.
  6. Not as many Beat-em-Ups as I had thought - I’ve often heard the Genesis described as the 16-bit king of sports, shooters, and beat-em-ups, but I was surprised by both the quantity and quality of that last genre. Streets of Rage 2 and TMNT: Hyperstone Heist are a couple of standouts, but the catalog gets incredibly thin beyond those two heavy hitters. Punisher is nice and Mystical Fighter is an odd hidden gem, but that’s about it. The SNES, meanwhile, has numerous ports of Capcom’s consistently excellent arcade brawlers, plus a handful of surprises like Ninja Warriors, Batman Returns, and Pirates of Dark Water. Unless you’re a huge Golden Axe fan (I’m not) I think you’ll find fewer beat-em-up options on the Genesis than on the SNES.
  7. A plethora of sports titles, but few worth playing - One genre that was well-represented on the Genesis was Sports. A total of 152 games appeared on the console which is just over 1/5th of all games in the library (21.7% to be exact). How many of those 152 games score higher than 70? Only 8. That means that only 5% of the sports games are what I consider “good” games. For perspective, there are more shmups (9 of them) than Sports titles which scored over 70. Put another way, almost one-third of all shmups on the system are Good compared to only 5% of Sports titles.
  8. The Genesis sound chip is truly awful - Yes, I know the Genesis doesn’t have a dedicated sound chip, and maybe that’s the point. All I know is that by and large the sound in most Genesis titles is painful to hear. Games tend to use the same canned sounds to compose their music, so everything sounds like a drum and church organ or a series of burps and farts. This is true regardless of how well-composed the music is. And voice samples are invariably scratchy and poor quality. Here’s a little visual to explain what I’m talking about:
  10. The worst games - The SNES and Genesis both had their fair share of bad games. In fact, they almost had the same number of “worst games in their genre.” You might be surprised to learn that the SNES (23) had more worsts than the Genesis (21)! Notable examples include racing-isometric, where the worst SNES game was a whopping 43 points worse than the Genesis game. Granted, there were only 7 games in the genre. But how about beat-em-ups, where the worst SNES game (Pit-Fighter) scored a 2?
  11. The best games - The SNES had the most “worst” games by a slim margin, but it absolutely dominated the Genesis in terms of having the most “best” titles. The SNES boasts 37 genre-defining titles compared to only 7 for the Genesis. Sega had the best point & click, pinball, dungeon crawler, western RPG (by one point), “other” sport, soccer, and RTS title. Not exactly high profile genres.
  12. The rarity of perfect gameplay - Seventy-nine Genesis games scored a 4 out of 5 in the Gameplay department, but not a single one earned a 5. Only twenty-five SNES games earned a 5, making it by far the least common rating given in any category. But still, not a single Genesis game deserved a perfect score in the gameplay department! Oh and for the sake of comparison, 109 SNES games earned a 4 out of 5.
  13. Konami & Treasure ruled the Sega Genesis library - This will shock no one, but Konami made some good games in the 16-bit era. In fact, the collective library produced by Konami and their unofficial offshoot studio, Treasure, are easily the best output of any publisher. Gunstar Heroes, Hyperstone Heist, Bloodlines, Hard Corps, Dynamite Headdy, Tiny Toons, Ristar, Rocket Knight, and yes, McDonald's Treasure Land Adventure are all wonderful titles with incredible graphics and engaging gameplay. It’s a shame that there weren’t more developers as talented as these two who were producing Genesis games in the early 90s.
  14. The controller - Oh, Genesis controller, how I hate thee. The distance between your three buttons makes me feel like I’m playing Chopsticks on the floor piano in Big. I bought a 6 button controller whose buttons are a much more reasonable size but even so, the A & C were too far apart when a game’s controls couldn’t be remapped. How am I supposed to press A & C together with the same thumb? Fingers don’t work that way, bub.
  15. Better on the Genesis or the SNES? - Two hundred and seventy seven games were released for both the Genesis and SNES. Most of these were direct ports, meaning that they were the same game on both systems, although a fair number shared nothing more than their title. These cross-platform titles allowed for some direct comparisons between the two systems. Unfortunately, most of these games were licensed and sports titles, so they weren’t exactly heavy hitters. Still, I couldn’t help but wonder what trends we might see between games released on both systems.
    1. First off, in aggregate, the SNES ports scored slightly higher than those on the Genesis. No surprise there, but what’s interesting is that the margin of difference is about 2 points (44.5 to 42.3). The difference is almost invariably due to Genesis titles receiving an Audio Score one value lower than the SNES version. The average audio score for SNES ports is 2.4 while the avg Genesis score is 1.9.
    2. Next, while many of these games were extremely similar on the two platforms, there were also examples of games that were significantly better on one system. More often than not, a better SNES game made an OK game good, while games better on Genesis most often made a bad game tolerable. As evidence, here’s a list of games significantly better than its doppelganger:

NEC TurboGrafx-16

  1. TG-16 is the WiiU of the 16 bit era - Its lack of success and poor third-party support resulted in a higher percentage of its games being good when compared to the SNES or Genesis. There are some great games here that weren’t available anywhere else.
  2. Some very Japanese games - The 16-bit era was an interesting time because the console makers were all Japanese companies (Nintendo, Sega, and NEC) but they were selling to a Western audience. The Genesis was loaded with Western-developed games, while the SNES had a mix of Western- and Eastern-developed titles, plus a lot of Japanese games that were adapted for the West. Despite being built for Japan, the TG-16 didn’t have a huge number of overtly Japanese games in its library, but those that were stood out like a sore thumb. I was expecting more than we got, but the other 16-bit consoles had nothing as distinctly Japanese as the likes of Magical Chase, Keith Courage, Samurai Ghost, Air Zonk, Chew Man Fu, and J.J. & Jeff on the TG-16.
  3. Early and Late - The TG-16 library can be seen as a tale of two time periods. We have the NES/SMS ports in 1989 and then the original releases in 1992-1993. As you might expect, game quality shot up considerably during those latter years for the console.
  4. Hidden gems - The entire library of TG-16 games may as well be considered hidden, so every good game on the system qualifies as a hidden gem. Even so, there were a few games that came out of nowhere to surprise me, like Jackie Chan’s Action Kung Fu, Cratermaze, Side Arms, and Legend of Hero Tonma.
  5. Over- and under-represented genres - With such a tiny library of games, it’s inevitable that some genres only a few games. In fact, there are quite a few that have zero representation on the TG-16. Nowhere was this more evident than in the sports genre, where the TG-16 didn’t have a single soccer, bowling, or fishing game, and only featured one game each of football and baseball. No sports sub-genre included more than two titles. Other genres with precious few entries include 1v1 fighting, beat-em-up, RPG, racing, simulation, and strategy.
  6. Shooters galore - It should come as no surprise that shoot-em-ups is one of the few genres that is well-represented on the TG-16. NEC’s little powerhouse is well-known for its shmup titles, such as Blazing Lazers, Star Soldier, and Magical Chase. I daresay this collection of 18 games is the best showing in a single genre amongst the three 16-bit consoles.
  7. Heavenly sounds - The TG-16 has a decent sound chip in it! I harped on the horrible sounds coming out of Sega's black box, but the TG-16 holds its own in the sound department when compared to the mighty SNES. The average Audio score for all TG-16 games is the same 2.7 that was earned by the SNES, while the average Genesis game earns an abysmal 2.2. A few standout soundtracks on the TG-16 include Alien Crush, R-Type, Air Zonk, and Soldier Blade.

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