Graphics: Turbo vs. Genesis - ye old debate

[OldTurboBastard]

I see alot on here with folks trying to declare the turbo as having more impressive graphics than the genesis. I've always been a fan of turbografx but pretty much knew the graphics were not up to snuff (even though I would still argue the point back in the day). The additional background layer on the genesis did wonders, and it seemed like the turbo games spent alot of power and sprites trying to emulate this effect. Also the resolution always appeared higher on the Genesis games, with smoother edges and more detailed sprites. I would give the turbo an edge in color, but thats about it. I would say that it was always interesting to see how the programmers could overcome the single background limitation on the the turbo. LOT is especially impressive in this department. The limitations of the turbo are especially apparent in ports like altered beast and strider, where the turbo just can't match the depth of the parallax layers.

Any comparisons that could blow me out of the water and prove me wrong? I'd love to see. Plus where, if it all, does the turbo beat out the Genesis in any tech stat categories? I'm talking strictly graphics not sound

[spenoza]

Even though the "standard" resolution of the TG-16 was square and a little smaller, it could do a larger screen res that was largely equal to the Genesis screen res. I think Irem games typically used the larger screen res. Also, the Genesis could only put 64 colors on a screen and the TG-16 could put far more. One need only compare the PCE port of SF2 to the Genesis port to see some of the graphical differences. And while layered backgrounds and such are nice, graphics are, at their core, detail (resolution) and color, and the TG beats the Genesis on color and is capable of matching it on detail.

Once you get to CD games, compare the CD versions of Strider and Forgotten Worlds to the Genesis cartridge versions.

One area where the Genesis did really shine was putting the powerful CPU to use for creating special effects. Games like Gunstar Heroes and Bio Hazard Battle really used animation and other neat effects to take what was only so impressive when paused and make it "wow!" when put in motion.

[nodtveidt]

This is a tired old debate that I wish would go the f*ck away.

Anyways, the Genesis may seem more impressive, but that's because Sega was able to secure more talented third parties with bigger budgets, and they could devote more time to messing with the hardware to create nifty tricks. The only advantage the Genesis really has in the graphics department is the second background layer. It's an important advantage though. Also, the Genesis can do tile flipping (this helps for memory usage, a major problem on the Genesis), and from what I understand, supports 8x8 sprites, whereas the TG16's smallest sprite size is 16x16 (may not seem important, but using a 16x16 sprite for bullets in a shooter seems wasteful). Things are pretty close between the two consoles, and zealots on both sides like to point out this or that advantage. I'll give a brief zealotry rundown:

Genesis Zealot: The Genesis has 80 sprites!
Turbo Zealot: Yeah but the Turbo can do 32x64 sprites, whereas the Genesis can only do 32x32 tops!
Genesis Zealot: The Genesis has two background layers! Hah, beat that, Turbonerd!
Turbo Zealot: So does the Supergrafx! And it has twice the RAM! Hah back at you!
Genesis Zealot: Hey that's not fair, no one has a Supergrafx!
Turbo Zealot: Hah! Sucks to be you!
Genesis Zealot: The Genesis has SHADOW MODE!!!!!!*&^!@$#^^
Turbo Zealot: The Turbo has more colors already built in without the need for some stupid hardware hack!
Genesis Zealot: The Genesis has 32 megabit games!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!111111111
Turbo Zealot: You need all that extra memory for the wasteful CPU your console has! We don't NEED cartridges that big! Besides, our Street Fighter II kicks your Street Fighter II's stupid ass!
Genesis Zealot: Sega's games on the Turbo look like ass!
Turbo Zealot: WELL NO DUH! They had to make them look like crap on superior hardware (Turbo) so they could sell more of their inferior hardware (Genesis)!
Genesis Zealot: Well suck on this! The Genesis has a 16 bit CPU with a higher clock rate! HAH! Sucks to be your old 8 bit turtle!
Turbo Zealot: The Turbo's CPU is more efficient than your wasteful RISC wanabe CPU! It performs better than your Frankenstein of a CPU!

Rarely do the tile-flip and 8x8 sprite size advantages of the Genesis come into play because the common zealot knows nothing of these details...these were not pimped by magazines back in the day so zealots never touch on them.

Coming right down to it, neither machine is the clear-cut winner, both have their strengths and weaknesses. The Genesis shines in parallax, the Turbo shines in colors.

And don't bother with the speed argument...games run at 60FPS, plain and simple. The speed of the game is controlled by the software; if I make tiles scroll at 2 pixels rather than 1, my game is going to look twice as fast. This is the concept behind "speedy Genesis games" like Sonic...variable tile scrolling rates make the game faster...it has nothing to do with that old media buzzword, "blast processing".

Standard resolutions:
Genesis: 320x224 viewable
Turbo: 256x224 viewable

I don't know how high the Genesis can go but I do know that the Turbo can do 512 pixels across and about 263 or so tall.

[ccovell]

Yeah, this is an endless discussion.  You even said so yourself, so why fight the prophecy in trying to end it? 

Rarely do the tile-flip and 8x8 sprite size advantages of the Genesis come into play because the common zealot knows nothing of these details...these were not pimped by magazines back in the day so zealots never touch on them.

This is a rather faulty argument, saying that the advantage of one system doesn't count because few people are aware of it.

The tile-flipping feature of the Genesis BG is what helps make the graphics more detailed.  Let's say you wanted to put a circle on-screen on both systems.  The graphic tiles in the Genesis would take up 1/4 of the VRAM compared to the Turbo, and thus the other 3/4 of extra space in the Genesis could be used for even more graphics.

And don't bother with the speed argument...games run at 60FPS, plain and simple. The speed of the game is controlled by the software; if I make tiles scroll at 2 pixels rather than 1, my game is going to look twice as fast.

60fps is only there for timing; the clock speed of the CPU is what determines how much processing can be done within that 60th of a second.  And I'd say as far as calculating polygons and moving sprites around go, the Genesis wins out.

Standard resolutions:
Genesis: 320x224 viewable
Turbo: 256x224 viewable

Be careful when using words like "standard", as the less intelligent on the internet always take that to mean "maximum."

I don't know how high the Genesis can go but I do know that the Turbo can do 512 pixels across and about 263 or so tall.

I'm no expert, but I'm aware that both systems can manage 256x224, 256x240, 320x224, 320x240 resolutions.  The PCE can additionally manage a vertical maximum of 242 lines, and a horizontal resolution exceeding 565 pixels.  (TV overscan limitations notwithstanding.)

[nat]

I see alot on here with folks trying to declare the turbo as having more impressive graphics than the genesis. I've always been a fan of turbografx but pretty much knew the graphics were not up to snuff

 

[OldTurboBastard]

60fps is only there for timing; the clock speed of the CPU is what determines how much processing can be done within that 60th of a second.  And I'd say as far as calculating polygons and moving sprites around go, the Genesis wins out.

So does this mean that a standard game loop should always run at 1/60th of a second?? I'm new to all this but interested

[Necromancer]

I see alot on here with folks trying to declare the turbo as having more impressive graphics than the genesis.

That's 'cause it's true for most games that were released on both systems.  You can't swing a dead cat without hitting a game that looks better on the Turbo than it does on the Genesis - such as Exile, Devil's Crush (close call), Lords of Thunder, Street Fighter 2, Forgotten Worlds, and the Arcade Card SNK fighters.  Of course, a few games look just as good or even better on the Genny -  namely Aero Blasters and Dynastic Hero.  Basically, it boils down to the Genny's limited color palette.  The Turbo could replicate the missing extra plane by using sprites, but the Genesis couldn't do anything about the lack of colors (which resulted in nicely detailed games with washed out colors).

If I look at the best games that each console has to offer, I can't see any meaningful differences.  Like has already been said - the Genesis and the Turbo are pretty damn close in capabilities, with each having a slight advantage in some specs and a slight disadvantage in others.

Now gimme back my two cents. 

[nodtveidt]

This is a rather faulty argument, saying that the advantage of one system doesn't count because few people are aware of it.

No no no, what I mean is that this is a detail that never comes up in the flame wars between zealots. I wish the PCE had this ability. I don't think a big boring circle is a very good example though. The guy working on the Sonic clone was kind of annoyed at the lack of tile flipping, as it would have helped out his doing bonus stages (going for the Sonic 2 thing) but I showed him another way to get good results.

60fps is only there for timing; the clock speed of the CPU is what determines how much processing can be done within that 60th of a second.  And I'd say as far as calculating polygons and moving sprites around go, the Genesis wins out.

Genesis zealots would wish such a thing. I have no problem moving around 40+ sprites on the PCE hardware without any degredation of performance, even with collision detection. Controlling that many sprites on the Genesis always seemed to result in degradation of performance, but only when collision detection was applied (using the same algorithm). When in a real application, the speed of the game is going to be affected by the efficiency of the coldet function, which is going to be related to how fast the CPU can crunch numbers. The two competing CPUs are pretty on-par in calculation speed here; this I know because I've written benchmark programs for both consoles to see which one had more performance in raw calculations. The difference is less than 1%, with the 6280 having a slight advantage in addition and subtraction and the 68000 having a slight advantage in multiplication and division (optimized mul/div, perhaps?). Also, you can technically forgo the vsync, allowing your program to run as fast as the machine can go, but if you do this then you're a bloody idiot who needs to consider a new career. The MHz of the CPU isn't the only factor in determining how much processing can be done (didn't AMD drill this point home with people?), you also have to consider how many ticks an instruction takes. The 6280 and the 68000 vary quite a bit in many instructions. At the end of the day though, they're roughly even; a program written for one will perform roughly the same as the same program written for the other.

Be careful when using words like "standard", as the less intelligent on the internet always take that to mean "maximum."

When I say "standard", I'm saying what is typically used, which is more or less the "standard". The less intelligent on the internet are the ones who start up the stupid zealot flame wars to begin with.

[OldTurboBastard]

I see alot on here with folks trying to declare the turbo as having more impressive graphics than the genesis.

 The Turbo could replicate the missing extra plane by using sprites, but the Genesis couldn't do anything about the lack of colors (which resulted in nicely detailed games with washed out colors).

but the turbo struggled to pull it off and sacrificed sprites to do it half as well. After hearing from some others in here, that's still the main (and perhaps only) disavantage of the turbo, but it's a big one in my book that. I don't think i've ever looked at a genesis game and siad "this would great if i had three more shades of aqua #3". I have definitely fired up a turbo game (forgotten worlds etc) and said "where' the parallax?" or better yet noticed the background flickering in psychosis cause it's really an extra sprite that the turbo can't handle.

having said all this, I still love the Turbo as i said before the games sem to have a quality that makes them more fun to play.

That a refund on the 2 cents

[Turbo D]

Genesis has poor color. PcEngine games are better looking and more colorful that the Genesis. Go ahead and compare after burner, then you will see what I'm talking about. The PcEngine was obviously more powerful. Genesis games always look shitty. You can especially see the difference on that sorry lords of thunder port. I mean come on, was that a joke? It had parallax were it wasn't supposed to, eliminating the purpose of parallax. The sound was god awful too. All of the colors are bland and faded. Seriously, go download the dual boot cd and see for yourself.

[awack]

chiki chiki boys
forgotten worlds
lords of thunder
bonanza bros
gain ground
shadow of the beast
super darius 2
fatal fury2
fatal fury special
art of fighting
strider
snatcher
dynastic hero
double dragon 2
might & magic III
daisenpu costom
monster lair
valis 3
valis 1
golden axe
exile
Ys III
zero wing
hellfire
warsong (langrisser)
streetfighter 2
after burner
out run
cadash
atomic robo kid
aero blasters (air buster)
altered beast
rastan saga
bomberman 94 (mega momberman)
tiger heli

and for fun the snes:
shadow of the beast (super shadow of the beast)
world heroes 2
fatal fury 2
fatal fury special
art of fighting
dracula x,  not a direct port or a sequal but a remake.
brandish
emerald dragon
Ys III
Ys IV
valis IV
raiden
street fighter 2
might & magic III
dungeon explorer 2 (crystal beans)
tokimeki memorial

these are not all of them but most of the games from this large sample of ports and remakes, for me are better graphics wise than either the genesis or snes.
 

[Turbo D]

great list 

[Keranu]

We've had several threads with this debate before, as well as with the SNES thrown in. I think our most extreme case was the legendary Ranger X: The Official Debate Thread.

Really it's not so much the power of each system that makes the difference as it is the art itself.

[GUTS]

Obviously the Genesis with Sega CD completely blows both Turbo and SNES out of the water graphically (Soul Star and Battlecorps alone are proof of this), but if you compare just the base Genesis to the Turbo Duo then I think they're basically equal. 

[Joe Redifer]

Ummmm... should Golden Axe really be on the Turbo list as a positive asset?  The thing looked worse than the Master System version of that game.  I don't think Ys 3 should be on that list, either.  It may look great in stills, but the second it moves you can see where the quality most certainly wasn't.  Oh, Strider should be on that list, either.  It looks like it has 1/2 to 1/4 the colors of the Genesis version and lack of parallax as well.  And Areo Blasters/Air Buster shouldn't be on that list, either.  Everything in the Turbo version looks smaller.  Snatcher is a bit subjective and I don't think either system has any advantage graphically in this game.  Rastan Saga 2 looked pretty much identical on both systems, except the Genesis looked more like the arcade since it had parallax.  I could go on and on.  Horrible list.

Back when these consoles came out, arcades were what I was all about.  The Genesis matched the arcades better than the Turbo due to the extra screen which was almost ALWAYS present in the hot new arcade games of the time.  The Turbo reminded me more of the NES with its single layer and the same type of shimmering effects when it scrolled (remember, we were hooking these things up through RF or composite at best back then).  Yeah, the Turbo can put shitloads more color on the screen than the Genesis.  That is its one true advantage that cannot be argued against.  I also think the Turbo's 512 colors are better than the Genesis' 512 colors.  The Genesis seems to have 512 dark colors, whereas the Turbo has 512 pastel colors.