JJ&Jeff originally is a game from 30 Nov. 1987, furthermore it was a release game. It looked FANTASTIC back in 1987 and not anything near 8-bit as we knew it from any other NES and SMS games at that time. nice colors, fast and responding gameplay, high resolution, good music. in fact there was a real wonderboy game behind that title. The kung fu (30 Nov. 1987 as well), showing of with sprites such huge, almost never seen in any arcade game at that time. R-Type lol? only about one half a year later of its own and mighty arcade release, a 95% arcade perfect port of that one in a decade arcade ULTRA SMASH HIT, for your own home! only on PCE. lol, where is that borderline 8-Bit?
In other words, the PCE was a HUGE LEAP ahead the 8-bit generation as we knew it. About to comparable what the DC was when it came out and crushed the Ps1 and Saturn generation into deep grounds.
Since this thread is pretty everything but what it originally was; when in Rome... That's how I saw it as well. While I didn't have an SMS, I did grow up on the NES. I was an arcade junkie in the mid 80's. I had a pretty limited home computer at the time, Coco 2, at the end of 1983. I got to play a few games. But it wasn't until 1986 that I got my NES and never looked back. Soooo many awesome 8bit games. All the way up until 1990. I got my TG16 in 1990 and played it along side my NES (although not for long, the NES got abandoned fairly quickly after the TG16). Even playing something as super simplistic as Keith Courage... my god... the graphics were incredible! But everything else, Blazing Lazers, Rtype, Ninja Spirit, Bonk, Splatter House, Side Arms, Legendary Axe, Dungeon Explorer, and yes JJ and Jeff. None of those titles *even* looked remotely 8bit. JJ and Jeff looked, and sounded, and -played- like a 16bit next gen game. If I would have played that shit back in 1987 though??? FFfuuuufufufuuu... my mind would have been blown.
The problem with most gamers fond of the 16bit, is that they got into the 16bit generation later on (like 1992 or later). They have a skewed view of what '16bit' is. While I didn't own a Genesis right off the bat, I did play my friends quite a bit (he also had a TG16). I got my Genesis Jan' of 1991. 16bit style was still evolving. There wasn't a lot of difference in the beginning titles of the TG16 and Genesis. It wasn't until about when Sonic came out, that Genesis titles seemed to mature in animation department. Carts got bigger. I remember "Strider 8megs ohh crap!". I while did see an evolution in hucards, it didn't seem as great as in the Genesis. CD games were great, but CD 2.0 was pretty limiting. SuperCD 3.0 ram was desperately needed. Yes, I had played TGCD games early (my brother bought the addon, and a friend how gotten on as well). When the SNES hit the scene, I thought for sure the Turbo was dead. I just remember the SNES being incredible. It's launch games impressed, even with the slowdown. Such visuals... my god.. my eye!
But once I got over the superficial visuals (and audio... that was incredible too), I just played all three systems. I imported stuff for the Duo and eventually Genesis as well. Turbo games did have this more simplistic charm to them, even later ones. But they never seemed '8bit'. Shit, most of the magazines stated that it had two 8bit processors. That was the most believed theory. I never heard of anyone, back in the day, calling turbo games 8bit. 8bit meant NES and all it would have taken is a few minutes of playing some old NES games to realized the stupidity of such a statement. That's not to say that there weren't arguments or such. When the SNES came out, the Turbo's sound chip caught a lot of flack from gamer friends that I knew. Even didn't care for it much anymore. I wanted CD games anyway, so it didn't matter much. But same for the Genesis, after the SNES came out.. the Genesis was sounding VERY dated. Sometimes embarrassingly so. Hell, if the SMS had been popular here long with the FM module, we'd being saying how 8bit the Genesis sounds. If the Turbo feels borderline 8bit, then you don't know what 8bit is. Noob!