Besides the games we've talked about, the TG16 and SMS have a surprising amount in common that makes them worthy of comparison. Unlike their competitors, they're both unusual in that they don't fit neatly into the categories of "console generations" that has been widely adopted in recent years. Wikipedia and Gamefaqs might list them as forth- and third-generation consoles respectfully, but things aren't black and white and they co-existed for most of the same years.
What? Since when
didn't the SMS fit into the '8bit' generation? Or whatever generation you want to call it. The same generation as the NES. The difference between the SMS and the NES is even less than the difference between the Genesis and the SNES. Overlapping years means nothing. The MD came out in 1988. Famicom was still strong and '8bit' software was still being developed as well as the primary share of the market. Even more so over here in N/A. Following your logic, the only true 16bit console would have been the Super Famicom.
A couple years later, NEC brings the PCE to the U.S. It's not 1987 anymore: the NES is king, the SMS has just been superseded by the Genesis, and they can't just market it as a cool new console like they did in Japan (correct me if I'm wrong). No, it has to have "16" in the name and be a "next generation" cut above the current crop because the Genesis just launched two weeks before them with "16-bit" plastered across the front. That's fine for marketing, but the the first wave of orange-label games they're rushing over from Japan are one- or two-years-old. Some, like Keith Courage, look truly next generation. Others, like Vigilante and World Court Tennis, look like souped-up 8-bit games IMO.
I don't think NEC decided to tack on "-16" to the turbografx label just because the US Genesis was released two weeks earlier with such the branding. Marketing is always looking for an edge in the form of a phrase or word, so show the difference of their product. Sega used '16bit' because that was the obvious difference. In reality, it was raw clock speed that was the real difference (at least for CPU). The NES could have very well used a 16bit processor at 1.79mhz. It wouldn't have changed anything. There would still be flicker, limited colors, limited graphics via small cache of tiles/sprites. The term "16bit graphics" was also a marketing term. There were not literal 16bit graphics. The term is an extension of the branding of the generation. And the original Megadrive had big bold letters declaring "16bit" right on the console. It started in Japan, it just didn't have much of an effect I guess.
I never understand why people have such a hard time fitting the PCE/TG16 into the generation
after NES/SMS. The hardware easily puts it there:
-
over 4 times the speed of the NES/SMS
- 18 times the amount of unique colors onscreen (without tricks) compared to the NES, 15x more than the SMS
- 8 times total the amount of cached tiles compared to the NES and SMS
- 4 times the BG map size in vram than the NES, 8 times that of the SMS
- over 7 times the full screen sprite coverage compared to the NES and SMS
- 4 times the amount of sprite pixel per scanline bandwidth of the NES and SMS
- 16 times the sprite size (single sprite) of the NES and SMS
- 32 times the cart size without a mapper (stock) than the NES and SMS, 64 times if you count the whole address range.
- 8 times the size of the master palette of the NES and SMS
- Full real supported X/Y/Palette/other video functions *per* scanline in a proper (non hackish) setup. NES (hackish) and SMS have neither
- Full bandwidth to VRAM (read or write) during active display. NES and SMS have neither
- 7 times the vram bandwidth (local memory to vram transfer) of the NES and SMS.
- 5 times the amount of direct pixels in sprites than the NES, same on the SMS though
- 8 times the number of total subpalettes of the NES, 16 times that of the SMS
- 4 times the number of sprite subpalettes of the NES, 16 times that of the SMS
- 4 times the number of BG subpalettes of the NES, 8 times that of the SMS
- 2 times the frequency resolution of the NES audio range, 4 times that of the SMS (PSG)
- 6 times the number of digital PCM channels than the NES, SMS has no digital PCM channels
- Real stereo with panning for all audio channels and a master one as well. NES and SMS are mono
- Easily over 100 waveform definitions (user defined waveform playback) for all channels compared to the SMS 1 (PSG) and the NES 4 (3 square type and 1 triangle)
The SMS is only a step up in the amount of colors per cell (tile cell or sprite cell) over the NES. It's inferior in a lot of other ways: no sprite table DMA to vram compared to the NES, less audio channels/no PCM channel/no different waveform types/less frequency range and resolution than the NES, smaller tilemap size than the NES (SMS map size is archaically small - single screen), raw cpu clock is faster on the SMS but the z80 is much slower than the 6502 - so it's the same real speed and sometimes slower, NES has vram for tile/sprite cells on the cart and can easily swap out large number of bytes in vram with just a handful of cpu cycles while the SMS has no DMA and has to manually slowly update vram. I could go on and on. The SMS has
one significant increase in color over the NES and a
number of inferior features compared to it as well. The SMS is in no way a transitional generation system.
Looks at the dates too: Famicom released in 1983, SMS in 1985(2 years after Famicom), PCE in 1987 (4 years after famicom), MD in 1988 (5 years after famicom, but 3 years after SMS, 1 year almost to date after the PCE). 1 year separates the MD and PCE. Not a much separates the PCE and the MD in tech specs relative to both systems compared to the Famicom and SMS. Neither of the PCE or MD completely over specs one another either. Even the Super Famicom released in 1991 doesn't *completely* over spec either the PCE or the MD, but all three over spec the Famicom and the SMS.
PCE does have more generation transitional software than the MD or SFC. But I think that's pretty common for the first system out the door. ROM speed was much faster than the NES and SMS, leading to higher prices and smaller ROM sizes. Problem is that the rom sizes didn't weren't in scaled proportion of what was needed for the scaled hardware relative to the NES and SMS. Hucards should have been a minimum of 4Mbits starting, 6mbits upper average, and 8Mbits for top tier for the first two years. That's what was need to keep in scale with the other 8bit systems. Not the usual 2Mbit and later/rarer 3Mbit the first two years. I guess NEC wanted to emphasize the CDROM addon difference. PCE's transitional feeling softs sold much more in numbers than Sega's everything but transitional feeling/playing softs.
