All that matters is neat factoids that they come across that they can hold over another persons head to sound hardcore to themselves.
And to re-instill the fact to their fragile egos that their childhood system of choice was
superior. So by extension,
they are superior. I mean, going beyond just simple preferences/bias based on nostalgia. The comments I've seen about the TG compared to the SNES or Genesis are pretty retarded so they tend to stick out, but the
larger major of bit war
discussions, if you can call it that, nowadays about retro systems are actually just between the SNES and Genesis.
Video game manufacture's advertisement divisions didn't create the 'bit war' terminology. They just borrowed it. It around much earlier than the '16bit' generation. The computer marketing divisions were using it for quite a while. Hell, the 'ST' in Atari ST stands for sixteen/thirtytwo. As in 16bit data bus, 32bit cpu. Yes, they were calling the original 68000 cpu a
32bit cpu. Why the hell didn't Sega pickup on that? Guess they shot themselves in the foot when the put '16bit' on the top of the original model console. At least in the computer scene, it made a little more sense (still highly dependent on the computer itself though).
Also the CPU's are not the same the PC engine's is over twice as fast as the NES
Why not tell it like it is. It's over four times as fast (it's exactly 4 times the clock speed, but the difference is more than just that).
I like to ask people who tout such bitness inferiority of the TG/PCE, what they think would
actually be different if the
NES had a 1.79mhz 68k 16bit cpu. By all accounts, it would be a 16bit system (the intellivision example usually doesn't work on them, since such people rarely have experience with systems pre NES). Then tell them that nothing about the video/sprites/colors/BGs or sound or music would change. Not a single thing. 7 times out of 10, they can't reconcile the fact and just revert to some stupid defensive mechanism (denial); "doesn't matter, TG/PCE isn't a true 16bit system. It has an 8bit cpu and you can't change that fact". Or something along those lines and probably more crudely put.
The bit wars are still going strong today in the retro scene. They might have evolved a bit into other terms in the PSX/Saturn/N64 era, but it's pretty much still the same ball and chain there as well, in todays discussions.
Putting aside all the examples of great games on the system for just a sec (yeah, I know that sounds crazy), it's probably true to say that the PCE/TG appeal is the 'underdog' system for most PCE fans. And/or its obscurity as whole (though usually a Japanese game thing), relatively speaking.
