/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.1201370]

I have a theory regarding the Genesis.

I believe Sega's marketing at the time ended up hurting the Genesis' / Megadrive's public image in the long run.

A lot of people seem to think the only good games the Genesis had were the Sonic games, Aladdin and maybe Eco (personally I think eco is average).

Thoughts on this?

[Anonymous No.1201378]

After all, when people think nintendo at the time they think Legend of Zelda, Metroid, Mario, F-zero, Starfox.

When people think Sega Genesis they think Sonic... and that's it really

[Anonymous No.1201379]

>>1201370
>Thoughts on this?

That you're wrong, for starters. And I don't know who these people you're referring to, but a lot of people who know about the Genesis seem to know more about Sonic and company.

And assuming you're right about that marketing, what's the issue? Did Nintendo not push their first party titles in the same way?

[Anonymous No.1201420]

[Anonymous No.1201445]

>>1201420

I was a poorfag in Europe and even I had Street Fighter for the Megadrive, along with Mortal Kombat, Sonic of course, Altered Beast and Golden Axe, and my dad found a Magical Hat Tuban cart with an adapter, it had a lot of bugs though because of the adapter.
Then my rich cousin got himself a Neo-Geo and decided to give me his "old" SNES with his games, that was so awesome.

[Anonymous No.1201468]

>>1201445
Aw, too bad you didn't get the superior version of magical hat.

[Anonymous No.1201473]

>>1201468

How was that superior?

[Anonymous No.1201478]

>>1201473
Better music and a cooler overall theme.

[Anonymous No.1201479]

>>1201478

Will download now, thanks

[Anonymous No.1201481]

>>1201479
Level design is different for some levels, so watch out. Also, Max has a lot less control over his momentum.

[Anonymous No.1201486]

>>1201378
The reason everyone always brings up Sonic is because Sega imploded a decade ago and since then the ONLY thing they are releasing is sonic sonic sonic. Sega is whoring out Sonic, so everyone thinks that that's the only series they have. Everything else gets the black sheep treatment, with maybe one or two updates a decade, or a new mobile/iphone version which no one cares about.

Zelda, Metroid, Mario, Starfox etc all get at least one refresh per generation. Mario gets like ten every year. So people remember those; and when they look up the SNES they can also look up the old Mario Zelda Metroid.

It's like how suddenly all the old SNES Square RPGs became the most influential games ever created, once FF7/8/9 and Chrono Cross were out, despite no one really giving half a fuck about them in America back in the 90s.

It's all retroactive viral marketing.

[Anonymous No.1201496]

>>1201378
>After all, when people think nintendo at the time they think Legend of Zelda, Metroid, Mario, F-zero, Starfox.When people think Sega Genesis they think Sonic... and that's it really

That's because all of those games still get yearly updates.

But do you remember, I dunno, the Ice Climbers, Mister Takahashi, Mappy, Dig Dug, Vic Viper, or Bub and Bob?

[Anonymous No.1201497]

>>1201496
Who doesn't remember Dig Dug or Gradius?

[Anonymous No.1201504]

>>1201497
The same people who remember the Genesis as Sonic Sonic and Sonic.

[Anonymous No.1201582]

>>1201497
Are you implying the average person that plays video games even likes shoot 'em ups?

[Anonymous No.1201585]

I must admit, as far as I was concerned, Sega was crap when it came to hardware, OR whatever they did with the hardware did not use it to its full potential. The sound samples sounded like crap, and most games that had digital imagery suffered as well, - but there were games that were gems, and not just Sonic.

Vectorman is one of the games that comes to mind - that was a good that not only played well and was great (IMHO), but finally started to use the potential of the system.

Earthworm Jim looked as good as the SNES , played well, except for the audio samples , sounded like crap.

When it came to hardware, Sega lagged and had poor timing.

You saw this all the way up to Dreamcast. That was a very impressive system, but Sega's decision to use a proprietary disc format "GD-ROM" was overall pointless, it didn't prevent piracy at all, and got killed when PS2 came out touting games on a standard DVD, nevermind DVD-Playback as well.

[Anonymous No.1201610]

>>1201585
>Earthworm Jim looked as good as the SNES , played well, except for the audio samples , sounded like crap.

You're talking about the SNES version, right? The Genesis version is the original, the SNES version is a port. A port that is notorious for sounding awful, especially the vocal effects which are just muffled versions of what was already compressed for the Genesis.

[Anonymous No.1201613]

>>1201585
Earthworm both looked and sounded significantly better on the Genesis.
On the SNES the resolution was smaller, the colors were duller, tons of voice clips were missing, and what voices and music there was was extra muffled, even for SNES standards.

[Anonymous No.1201623]

>>1201610
No, I have gone back and played both EWJ on Sega and SNES for comparison , Genesis sounded scratchy, where as SNES digital samples of the vocals sounded better. I am sorry if I am dumping on the Genesis version, again I enjoyed playing both versions, but EWJ SNES the sound samples were better even if it was ported.

I will say this, I also then played EWJ on SegaCD, and the digital samples had a noticeable improvement. Then again thats because the SegaCD samples were on the disc, this is the same if you compare MK1 on Genesis VS SegaCD, since CDs obviously have more storage capacity, better digital samples, and extra sound processor from the SegaCD addon.

Sorry I didn't mean to ramble on though...

[Anonymous No.1201629]

>>1201370

Sega's marketing actually saved the Genesis in the US. Looking back at the "what nintendon't" campaign didn't offend anyone by the mid-90's. Making the 32x that they knew was dead-end hardware, but management changes and some really horrible decisions during the Saturn era hurt the company a lot more. Up to the 5th gen, at least in the West, Sega wasn't doing too bad.

[Anonymous No.1201632]

>>1201585
I don't think they are crap when it came to hardware. The sound chip can produce some rocking or funky music, and the console wasn't notorious for slow downs like the SNES

[Anonymous No.1201645]

>>1201632
Music wise yes it was awesome! but again when it came to actual digital samples , vocals, or other samples (non musical) , SNES was better. i don't deny SNES had slowdowns, each console had it's own technical issues vs the other.

But I always felt that Sega never did make very good decisions when it came to hardware, I reiterate this with later consoles like Dreamcast. You can also look at Sega Saturn, it was great, but they focused too much on 2-D, and had more 2D power than 3-D, then PS1 came out and effectively sidelined Saturn.

BUT.....you want slowdown again? compare Castelvania on PSX vs, Saturn... Turn into the myst form on PSX, and YOU WILL GET MAJOR BUTTLOAD, SSSLLOOWDOWN, vs Saturn, it plays normally as it should, thats where it's 2D beat PSX and why you saw awesome 2D fighters mostly on Saturn rather than PSX, but again at that time 3-D was taking over.

[Anonymous No.1201651]

>>1201645
Oh yea, and I did actually Enjoy Knights into Dreams on Saturn, a game that tried to use the potential of Saturn.

[Anonymous No.1201654]

>>1201378
>When people think Sega Genesis they think Sonic... and that's it really
I think Shinobi, Streets of Rage, Comix Zone, Vectorman, Gunstar Heroes and so on, as well as Sonic.
People think of Sonic so much because Sonic is still popular today.

[Anonymous No.1201656]

>>1201623
Clearly you haven't gone back and played them recently enough, because the Sega CD version actually has the -worst- sounding vocals for some odd reason. It's not an emulation issue -- I actually own it; the voices sound just as bad on the real console, and way, way worse than the Genesis version. No idea how Shiny screwed that one up.

http://picosong.com/qDaP/

Here's all three at once. First is Genesis, second is Sega CD, third is SNES.

[Anonymous No.1201657]

>>1201651
>Knights
I mean Nights ....
Need2lern2type sorry

[Anonymous No.1201659]

>>1201629

What the Nintendon't stuff did was playful but not nasty and not chastising the consumer for preferring Nintendo but saying "Here's why Sega is awesome" and Sega had it down to an art. They were saying why their product was better instead of having just a put down. Problem was that advertising started getting nasty and grating when everyone used it to the point where, outside of a few playful stunts and sabotages, no one outright directs the advertising to be attacking potential customers and it only ends up stirring up fanboy vitriol in the end that they stopped it because if you end up being a dick to the customer and questioning their choices to sell your product, you won't get anywhere because they will just say "What a fucking dick".

But then Sega US management seemed to have a lot of horrible shit dumped on them from Sega Japan that eventually infected Sega Europe (Which had an even more successful campaign in Europe thanks to distributor, Virgin Mastertronic. It destroyed the SNES)

[Anonymous No.1201663]

>>1201370
>I believe Sega's marketing at the time ended up hurting the Genesis' / Megadrive's public image in the long run.
No. Not in the slightest.
At one point in time the Genesis was performing better than the SNES in America. Then SEGA of Japan killed the console in all territories, because they're fucking retarded.

...So I guess in a very roundabout way it did ultimately hurt the company (not the Genesis though).
The aggressive advertising is part of what made the Genesis such a huge success in western markets, but the Mega Drive was a flop in Japan.
SEGA of Japan always resented that those European and especially American branches did so much better than them, and that was pretty much the root of all the in-fighting that tore the company apart.

>>1201645
>still believing that voice clips on the Genesis were always shit
Play more video games.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KsMRe_QenvU

[Anonymous No.1201669]

>>1201663
>Then SEGA of Japan killed the console in all territories
How did they do that?

[Anonymous No.1201679]

>>1201669
They ended support for the system worldwide to make way for the Saturn.
The decision makes sense if you are only paying attention to the Japanese market, where the Mega Drive didn't do well, but at that time in America and Europe SEGA was dominating Nintendo and could have gone on doing so for the rest of that generation.

[Anonymous No.1201684]

>>1201486
Not really, I have old gamepros from the snes era with shops advertising values of popular games and the rpgs back then still cost a bit more than popular first party games for example.

[Anonymous No.1201693]

>>1201669
1. Export nothing Mega Drive out of Japan
2. Make Saturn
3. Never tell worldwide divisions the Saturn is coming
4. Allow 32X to happen, millions wasted on prolonging Genesis
5. Release Saturn 4 days before even Sega of America knew when it was coming out
6. None of the international markets ready for Saturn, thus no games
7. Retails stuck with dead Genesis and dead Saturn
8. Pull plug on Saturn

[Anonymous No.1201698]

>>1201693
>1. Export nothing Mega Drive out of Japan

What? I mean, yeah, we missed some games like Pulseman and Alien Soldier (Though I've always suspected that was largely in part to Sega of America wanting some exclusives to push Sega Channel) but we got nearly all of the many noteworthy games on the Genesis. Did you mean the Saturn?

[Anonymous No.1201696]

>>1201679

It was ridiculously bad. EA even had to do a deal to continue support on their own as FIFA and Madden was still ridiculously profitable (They even got up to '98 on the system for both series) while Sega completely dropped it stone dead in 96 because people wanted to stick with it. Sega could have easily let the MD go another year or two while they refined the Saturn to be better but they were too afraid of Panasonic and Sony trying to eat in their share that they jumped the gun.

[Anonymous No.1201714]

I think OP was probably trolling since that "extreme" marketting was exactly what brought SEGA up to be able to challenge the king.

What screwed them over was their terrible 32x system and the abandoning of their longtime devotion to backward compatibility.

I've been told that the "Mark" architecture was about as powerful as it could ever possibly get with Genesis and I can see how a logical step to try to advance to the next gen while keeping backward compatibility would be to create an add-on to handle 3D but the 32x just ended up as a huge embarasment.

Even with the 32x costing them a lot of customer confidence, if the Saturn had been fully backward compatible with Genesis and Sega CD I think it would have beaten the Playstation because of the existing user base at launch. You can even see in the Saturn's design, with that oh so Genesis-like cartridge slot that it wanted so bad to be backward compatible but I guess it was just not meant to be.

[Anonymous No.1201727]

every.fucking.day

[Anonymous No.1201787]

>>1201714
>I've been told that the "Mark" architecture was about as powerful as it could ever possibly get with Genesis

There were a few missing possibilities. The VDP could support 128k ram (Genny had 64k), and there was an extra pin to extend the palette - I forgot what it did exactly, it either allowed for 2x the amount of colours or allowed for carts to specify their own palette instead of the built-in 9bit values.

RAM prices could've made the 128k version prohibitive, but in retrospect the palette extend pin could've worked wonders.

Also the biggest problem was that they did not include cpu interrupts on the extension port. This alone could've made the Sega CD ten times less of a clusterfuck than what it was. It ended up working by being a near complete system on its own that you had to program to write data into a shared word ram periodically, which the Megadrive could read out. Of course only one side could access that word ram at the same time, so it was total bullshit.

They "fixed" all imaginable shortcomings like those with the Saturn: it had shit ton of interrupts exposed, the cd subsystem was way more advanced than the Sega CD, had easy memory upgrades, and it had 24bit digital video input. In theory the Saturn could've been extended with carts to do any fucking thing you wanted it to do, as long as supplying power was not a problem (even a Megadrive-system-on-a-cart to provide compatibility).
It was also based on the then top-end System 24/32 hardware, much like how the Megadrive was a cut-down System 16. It was really the most natural evolution of their original Japanese designs.

The big problem was that they did Model 1-2 in the arcades, designed by a completely different team (Lockheed Martin), and CONQUERED the arcades with that. So suddenly they had to make the Saturn do all those at the homes, which it barely could.

Sega caught themselves introducing a paradigm shift in the industry, that made the Saturn obsolete before it was even out.

[Anonymous No.1201840]

>>1201420
>>1201420
That should be remade with how Nintendo was second banana ever since Sony took the wheel.

"You don't know what it was like in the lunchroom, listening to the Sony guys talk about Final Fantasy, and Metal Gear Solid, and Resident Evil.

I mean, we had Mario. And Mario Kart. Mario Tennis. Mario Golf. Mario Party. Mario Party 2.

Quest 64 wasn't great."

[Anonymous No.1201904]

>>1201787
So basically they could have saved themselves by doing two things

>Making available a "Powerbase Converter" at launch for the Saturn, same as with Genesis. Maybe even using the same promotion - send us your Genesis (to recycle for components) and we'll send you a converter for your Saturn and three free Genesis games.

>Developing a Saturn/SCD/Mark Emulator for Dreamcast and including a cartridge slot to read the roms from the old carts

>Super Secret Third Bullet Point - Don't fucking trust Microsoft with your DRM

[Anonymous No.1201912]

>>1201420
Why does the 32X get so much hate?

It was worth it just for arcade-quality MK2 and Doom.

[Anonymous No.1201921]

>A lot of people seem to think the only good games the Genesis had were the Sonic games, Aladdin and maybe Eco (personally I think eco is average).

That's because Sega died a long time ago now, and most of the people you see writing about video games on the internet these days were kids when Sega imploded. Their only experience with the Genesis / Mega Drive is emulators. They had never heard of any games other than Sonic, so that's the only game on emulators they played.

[Anonymous No.1201923]

>>1201912
It could have been worth it if SEGA of Japan didn't kill the Genesis off and if the SEGA CD didn't already exist, and even then it would still be a little questionable.

[Anonymous No.1201979]

>>1201912
The soundtrack ruined 32X Doom, though.

[Anonymous No.1202005]

>>1201979
Music in 32x Doom was fine. Way better than the SNES version.

[Anonymous No.1202009]

>>1201714
>to create an add-on to handle 3D but the 32x just ended up as a huge embarasment.
32x isn't designed to handle 3D. The choice of an FPU-less, SIMD-less SH-2 gives this away.

>>1201787
>It was also based on the then top-end System 24/32 hardware
Saturn doesn't look anything like the System 24 or System 32.

[Anonymous No.1202013]

>>1202005
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2oyweqZ7WM

[Anonymous No.1202012]

>>1202005
Hmm, I remember it sounding different.

[Anonymous No.1202020]

>>1202012
>>1202005
Wait, nevermind, wrong video. Dude, the 32X version sounds like farts.

[Anonymous No.1202037]

>>1202020
the SNES version sounds like muffled piss

[Anonymous No.1202039]

>>1202013
>literally farting out the guitar line

[Anonymous No.1202043]

>>1202005
The way the music sounds is the ONLY good thing about the SNES version.

In fact, it might be the best sounding of all the console versions, because the Playstation version is disqualified due to having its own different soundtrack.

[Anonymous No.1202046]

>>1202037
Being better than something else doesn't make it good.

[Anonymous No.1202057]

>>1202005
>Music in 32x Doom was fine. Way better than the SNES version.
That's a funny joke

You aren't serious, right

[Just a new tripfag hanging out(...) !!OOvUGr8R9rd No.1202058]

Countless hours in this game, countless.

[Anonymous No.1202062]

>>1201632

The Genesis was great at tracks that sounded rocking or funky. That's because it only had two speeds: rocking and funky. Anything else always sounded lackluster to me.

[Anonymous No.1202075]

>>1202043
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjEx292Ph8M

[Anonymous No.1202174]

>>1202062
You forgot techno.
Even then, the Genesis was perfectly capable of more than just those 3 things.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMKNjdcY-Qs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32S2oJuANxo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJJRaIZVgCk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qM8te49_ik
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7M1b6XCN99s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAhmQQUVq-8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYOll32kDkI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bL2-7qXUlM8
There's no denying that it did specialize in techno, rock, and funk, though.

[Anonymous No.1202178]

>>1202013
john-romero-takes-a-shit.mp3

[Anonymous No.1204204]

>>1201370
I watched a video about nintendo's "playstation" and discovered some things.

Sega spent millions developing a Cd drive to battle nintendo and the others: CD-i, 3DO, PC engine, etc. and even tried to one up it with the 32x.

we all know how those 2 add-ons ended up.

[Anonymous No.1205519]

>>1201585
>The sound samples sounded like crap
Oh boy, not again, listen to the music of Sword of Vermilion, Alisya Dragoon, Sub Terrania, Fantazy Zone, Space Invaders 94, Air Buster (Aero Blasters) and come back and tell me it sucks.

[Anonymous No.1208546]

eh, ive seen more bashing in Sega's ads than nintendo's. Sega was mostly "We have this! They do not! HATE THEM!" while Nintendo had that one DKC1 commercial that said "NOT ON SEGA". It's a common thing in marketing i know, but sega sounded like the bratty one in this playground

[Anonymous No.1208561]

every.fucking.day