Claudius

Which was better (and no discussion of the Jaguar please)?

Windex

I had a SNES and played Mario and Street Fighter all the time......good times

Acie

I've probably played the SNES more (in fact I still have one somewhere), but I think the Genesis was by far the superior console.

Cory

SNES

People never believe me when I tell them this, but back when Sega was touting it's "blast processing" in the genesis, pandering speed and gratuitous violence, openly and directly dissing Nintendo in TV and mag ads, I predicted that Sega would eventually fall on it's knees, and start making games for Nintendo consoles.

I just couldn't see how Sega's shallow and vapid company philosophy could ever sustain itself for very long.

And of course, I was right.

Nintendo is a great company.

*goes back to playing Metroid Prime 3*

zachus

Genesis was hands down the better console, and without question the Sonic games were better than the Mario games. Sega was always light years ahead of everyone else in terms of innovation, they've just never been able to market themselves.

Claudius

I'm gonna go with SNES, simply because it's game library was more fun to play. I grew up spoiled having both systems, but the SNES, with Super Punch Out, Super Mario World, Secret of Mana, Zelda, Mario Kart, Donkey Kong, Killer Instinct and even the later insallments of Mortal Kombat (MK3 and UMK3) were all superior to what the Genesis was offering.

Beyond Sonic and NHL 96, I can't think of games on that system that blew me away.

Cory

Why would you play the superior console the least?

SNES clearly had better graphics and sound. And the graphics involved special features like Mode 7 (which was not just some gimmick like blast processing), wire frame rendering, and the super fx chip, which was also not a gimmick, given how important polygon based graphics have proven to be.

Nintendo has always been light years ahead of the other companies. They might not always be the first to do certain things, but that has more to do with them being smart enough to know that a technology just isn't ready yet. This was sega's problem, they were too greedy to tout certain technical specs, not waiting until they reached a certain level of quality before releasing their stuff.

VanCity

i didnt have either ....my first console was the ps1

Acie

Because at the time I only owned a SNES and wasn't aware of how good the Genesis was.

bjjs

Cory is bang on. Sega really tried being the "cooler" console, while trying to paint SNES as a console for children and pussies.

Alot of my 13, 14 year old friends took the bait at the time, but I couldn't be convinced that Sega could hold a candle to SNES.

bjjs

Just curious Cory, where do you hold the Wii in comparison to the 360 and the PS3.

Acie

Isn't the Wii basically just two N64's in one box?

I concur that Sega is really horrible at marketing.

It's also why the Dreamcast failed.

Belsius

Dreamcast is my favourite console ever. Only one that I have bought and actually enjoyed as much as a PC.

Cory

I try to stay open minded, wanting to think each system has something uniquely good about it that the others lack.

I own a Wii, because it suits my situation. I only have a small % of free time for games, so I don't find myself lacking in depth titles to play, and with the casual games there is more opportunity to play with your friends in the same room together, rather than playing mutliplayer online with a mic, getting told off by some anonymous socially frusterated dude hiding behind a username and avatar. Also, the upcoming games for the Wii look very promising (new super mario bros wii, Metroid other M, Galaxy 2, a New Zelda), so the system has a lot of life left in it. The Wii's problem isn't quality of games, but quantity. There isn't a lot of 3rd party support. But that doesn't bother me, because like I say, I don't have much time for games anyway.

If I had more time, I would buy an Xbox, because I'm impressed with a lot of the 3rd party games (I would love to try Mass Effect, Oblivion & Fallout 3).

I don't know much about PS3. It doesn't appear to have much of a library of games...

zachus

+1 Bel. The Dreamcast was Gamecube, XBOX and PS2 before all three even came out. Some of the things Sega implemented with the Dreamcast were still more innovative than what Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft brought to the table. But it all comes down to appealing to the public and people would buy a block of wood from Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft before they'd take a bar of gold from Sega.

Claudius

Sega destroyed itself with the Saturn first, rushing that machine and then killing itself with the Dreamcast even further.

NFL 2K and Virtua Tennis were wicked awesome games. The price of the machine compared to the N64 at that time swayed my decision.

And Cory hit the nail on the head with the wii. The upcoming releases have me interested.

Acie

I love it.

It's where the 2k series started.

Now I rock a wii, but never have time to actually play it.

Cory

I know that in terms of advertising and politics, Sega pulled off an amazing feat with the genesis. The great success they had in the 90's was mostly the result of some ingenious bullshitting to the masses, and people bought into their hype. If they adopted the more mellow and conservative marketing strategy of Nintendo, they would not have held a candle to the SNES.

Sega's failure has more to do with not having the wisdom to focus on developing a library of good games, and also not having the wisdom to wait until they had decent hardware before releasing it. They rushed the Genesis, because they were greedy to tout "16 bit". The result, is that when Nintendo finally came out with their own 16bit, it was superior to the Genesis in every way. And then Sega, not learning from their mistake, rushed the Sega CD, again, because they were greedy to be the first to have CD. Of course, it was a terrible gimmick. Then, realizing they were over reaching, they regressed back to cartridge format with the 32X, which still wasn't any better than the SNES! Then they rushed the Saturn, which couldn't compete with playstation and N64.

So at that point, Sega's fan base pretty much retreated to Sony and Nintendo.

Sega basically sustained itself in the 90's through clever marketing alone, not focusing on what matters: quality games and quality console.

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INSIDER

SNES was hands down the better system.
the game library was light years ahead of sega... sega had about 40% of the total games Nintendo had.
Sega was too involved with trying to make its competition (nintendo) look bad, than actually trying to make their system better and more appealing.
Nintendo on the other hand, didnt even bother fighting that stupid war and focused on pumping out games and gaining a solid consumer base.
Sega was too busy trying to one up the competition and would rush everything out without doing enough testing or market research... and in the end, they failed because of this.

Renihan_00

See I owned a Wii but sold it, and I like to have video games specifically for when I DON'T have people over.

If I have people over we can find a million things to do, it's when I'm on my own I tend to get really bored! I only found the wii fun when I had people over...and I don't need it then,

So I sold it, got an xbox and am happier with that.

I think the quality of the games is very poor, gameplay is difficult because they haven't calibrated things very well yet....Also things "max out" too early. Like you can just sit there are flick your wrist.

If i'm just sitting around on my own flicking my wrist, I don't need a wii haha