Favorite 5th gen system

[Black Tiger]

Where's the Jaguar?  Truthfully, I love the Jag, it's not my favorite system by any means, but, it's an underdog, & I enjoy a great deal of the games on it.  The 3DO had it's share as well, but, too many FMV games like the Sega CD.  The CD32, I don't have enough games for it yet, atleast, one's that work on an NTSC tv, to really give an opinion.  It seems decent enough, & I liked the Amiga computers.  The Saturn is a great system, that never lived up to what it could've been outside of Japan.  But, even though I quite a few imports for it, & most of the domestic rpg's, the PS1 rules as #1, as I have too many good memories on it.  I had me some good times with the PS, no doubt.

I personally consider the Jaguar part of the 16-bit generation.

Doom,Alien versus Predator,I-War,Battlemorph,Hoverstrike Cd,and Wolfenstien 3d beg to differ,however Id say alot (not all) of the other offerings were more along the Amiga or 16-bit lines.

It had some 3D capability, but it didn't do much more than the better 16-bit arcade games.

I'd also classify the 32X as the high end of the 16-bit generation and the GBA as 16-bit.

We also saw Virtua Racing Genesis, Duke Nukem Megadrive, Doom SNES, Wolfenstien SNES, SSFII SNES, SF Alpha SNES, Star Fox, plus a bunch of great huge 16-bit RPG's that still looked great on 32-bit systems.

[Tatsujin]

an then, the 8-bit pc engine arcade cd-romrom came and beated all of them

[Michael Helgeson]

Where's the Jaguar?  Truthfully, I love the Jag, it's not my favorite system by any means, but, it's an underdog, & I enjoy a great deal of the games on it.  The 3DO had it's share as well, but, too many FMV games like the Sega CD.  The CD32, I don't have enough games for it yet, atleast, one's that work on an NTSC tv, to really give an opinion.  It seems decent enough, & I liked the Amiga computers.  The Saturn is a great system, that never lived up to what it could've been outside of Japan.  But, even though I quite a few imports for it, & most of the domestic rpg's, the PS1 rules as #1, as I have too many good memories on it.  I had me some good times with the PS, no doubt.

I personally consider the Jaguar part of the 16-bit generation.

Doom,Alien versus Predator,I-War,Battlemorph,Hoverstrike Cd,and Wolfenstien 3d beg to differ,however Id say alot (not all) of the other offerings were more along the Amiga or 16-bit lines.

It had some 3D capability, but it didn't do much more than the better 16-bit arcade games.

I'd also classify the 32X as the high end of the 16-bit generation and the GBA as 16-bit.

We also saw Virtua Racing Genesis, Duke Nukem Megadrive, Doom SNES, Wolfenstien SNES, SSFII SNES, SF Alpha SNES, Star Fox, plus a bunch of great huge 16-bit RPG's that still looked great on 32-bit systems.

Doom and Wolfenstien for Snes,and the unreleased in everywhere but Brazil Duke Nukem Megadrive couldnt compete with Doom,Wolfenstine and Alien versus Predator for Jaguar. As for 32X,it did use 32-bit processors,wether you want to classify it into whatever doesnt matter,because thats your opinion,not fact. As for the Jaguar,while I stead fast agree it didnt look like 64 bit graphics,it easily held its own with 486 DX and Pentium 1 gaming graphics,which fall into the 32-bit catagory up untill 3D accelerated graphics cards were made available like the VooDoo 1.

Big sorry in advance here but I am going to be posting comparasons and its going to be taking up some space. I cant help it. I cant stand to see someone sit there and make such obviously stupid bias comments about a couple of systems even if they are just opinion they are opinion with no real foundation to stand on.
























Granted the 32X and Jaguar were not the best,or even great examples of how 32-bit and 64-bit systems should have been,and yes they did fail. However it may have played out though,the fact remains that they obviously were not 16-bit,and in saying they were it makes it look like you think Model 1 games and Pentium Pro era games were 16-bit also. This is a mistake on your part,and not the fault of the systems being discussed here. All of them did have some shining examples of the power they had and what could have been if not for lack of solid support. A good example is MK 2 for Snes compared to Ultra Vortek. I will play Ultra Vortek any day of the week over a crap 16-bit port of MK 2. Some of the shining examples you mettioned for Genesis and Snes are infact not good examples of what those systems could do. At the rate you were going Im surprised you didnt say Stunt Race FX was better then Virtua Racing for 32X.

[SignOfZeta]

I'd also classify the...GBA as 16-bit.

Um...what?

[GUTS]

Alien VS Predator isn't a very good example of the Jaguar's 3D capabilities, the graphics were complete and utter shit.  The colors were bad and the framerate was HORRIBLE, Killing Time on 3DO looked smooth as butter in comparison.

[Tatsujin]

I'd also classify the...GBA as 16-bit.

Um...what?

what he means is, that the GBA actually is a 32-bitter, but its capability and characteristics resemble more to 16-bitters, i guess.

[Tatsujin]

Also, FM Towns Marty is just a computer in a console case, so it doesn't really qualify as a "console", at least not to me.

same you can say for the Amiga CD-32 or XBox etc...

the definiton of a console is a plug'n'play game-device to use on any kind of TVs, and that's just what the Marty is. Plug, turn on, insert game > have fun. It doesn't matter what's inside.

[Black Tiger]

I'd also classify the...GBA as 16-bit.

Um...what?

The GBA(Gameboy Advance) is supposed to be 32-bit.

Doom and Wolfenstien for Snes,and the unreleased in everywhere but Brazil Duke Nukem Megadrive couldnt compete with Doom,Wolfenstine and Alien versus Predator for Jaguar. As for 32X,it did use 32-bit processors,wether you want to classify it into whatever doesnt matter,because thats your opinion,not fact. As for the Jaguar,while I stead fast agree it didnt look like 64 bit graphics,it easily held its own with 486 DX and Pentium 1 gaming graphics,which fall into the 32-bit catagory up untill 3D accelerated graphics cards were made available like the VooDoo 1.

Big sorry in advance here but I am going to be posting comparasons and its going to be taking up some space. I cant help it. I cant stand to see someone sit there and make such obviously stupid bias comments about a couple of systems even if they are just opinion they are opinion with no real foundation to stand on.

Granted the 32X and Jaguar were not the best,or even great examples of how 32-bit and 64-bit systems should have been,and yes they did fail. However it may have played out though,the fact remains that they obviously were not 16-bit,and in saying they were it makes it look like you think Model 1 games and Pentium Pro era games were 16-bit also. This is a mistake on your part,and not the fault of the systems being discussed here. All of them did have some shining examples of the power they had and what could have been if not for lack of solid support. A good example is MK 2 for Snes compared to Ultra Vortek. I will play Ultra Vortek any day of the week over a crap 16-bit port of MK 2. Some of the shining examples you mettioned for Genesis and Snes are infact not good examples of what those systems could do. At the rate you were going Im surprised you didnt say Stunt Race FX was better then Virtua Racing for 32X.

By the same logic as comparing the Jaguar or even 3DO to SNES/Genesis to show how much more powerful they are and therefore 32-bit gen, if you compare them to the Saturn/PSX there's an even bigger gap.

As for Turbografx-16/PC Engine, it used 8-bit processors,wether you want to classify it into whatever doesnt matter, because thats your opinion, not fact. 

I don't consider the arcade of MKII 32-bit, let alone any ports. If Model 1 is 32+bit, does that make Model 2 64+bit? This is why I don't normally classify arcades by console generations.

I don't really consider the PC-FX a real 32-bitter either(ready to be flamed + banned ) and the N64 is 32-bit to me.

In my mind, the Dreamcast is part of the same generation as PS2/GC/Xbox.

I think that the SMS is closer to 16-bit than it is to the NES, basically all it needed was extra processing power. But I still call it 8-bit. So you can see how selective I am.

If the Xbox360 never received any 3D games and only received simple 16-bit'ish 2D games, I'd consider it more or less part of the 16-bit generation, regardless of generally untapped power.

I also believe that the Jaguar could've handled a port of Virtua Fighter better than the 32X's, at least match all of the 3DO's software and push some 3D that would look decent on Saturn/PSX... if the right people developed for it.

But as the software available overall is, it feels more like a 16-bit platform to me. But I'd take a high end 16-bitter over a low-end 32-bitter anyday.

As for the screenshot comparisons, I do think that both the Jaguar and 32X are awesome and I would have loved to see more great 2D games for them.

But that SF Alpha SNES pic looks amazing next to the arcade's, considering what the SNES is.

And those polygonal arcade, 32-X and Jaguar games do crush Star Fox and other Genesis/SNES 3D games. But try comparing them to the best 3D Saturn and PSX games with full texture mapping and a ton of crazy effects. The Saturn/PSX mop the floor with anything on Jag/32X/3DO much more than the latter 3 dominate the Gen/SNES.

But don't worry, I won't call you stupid. 

And I don't think that PSX vs Jag screenshot comparisons are necessary.


Basically, I guess the way to sum up my personal classification of a console's 'generation', is by how close it/it's overall software is to each generations' main/most successful consoles.

So I guess I'd group systems by how close they are to the following: NES, Genesis/SNES, PSX, PS2, 360.

[Michael Helgeson]

Model 1 main cpu 32bits RISC NEC V60 uPD-70616 and graphics cpu Fujitsu TGP MB86233 FPU 32bits 16M flops. Easily 32-bits on both ends and it shows it. Sorry but any complicated 3d graphics,even untextured still required minium 32-bit cpu of some type doing some work,and even untextured 3d games like Virtua Racing or Virtua Fighter easily still look 32-bit,even if early generation,the polygon counts are very high.

Model 2 used a main cpu of Intel i960-KB @ 25 MHz 32bits RISC type. the graphics gpu tended to be 1 of 2 diff types,either by Fujitsu or Anologe Devices,both 32-bit,and they would either use 1 on up to 5 gpus in the hardware.

As for the 32X,and what alot of people dont realize i sthat the twin SH2 32 bit RISC processors for it were all it had for its graphics. It didnt have a gpu,just extra ram and video ram,and all rendering 3d and partly 2d was handled by the SH2s in software,which is pretty impressive,esp for the time. It shared a little bit of the 2d rendering task with the Genesis. And as posted above,its easy to see that the 32X produced 32-bit looking games along with nice ports of 16-bit arcade games.

As for the Jaguar,people tend to forget this simple fact that the system had Tom and Jerry both which did  a combination of 32-64 bit data work in different areas graphically and audio wise. It also used  a Motorola 68000. People tend to confuse this cpu as a 16 bit cpu because early models of it had  a external 16-bit data bus and competing game companies like Sony took advantage of this lack of consumer knowledge when bashing Jaguar. Gamers also were not aware that Motorola also sold 8-bit data bus versions of 68000 because they dont think too far out of the box at times. This 8-bit data bus version was stuck in alot of computers as a low cost alternative. Simple fact is even though the 68000 had 16-bit ALUs, addresses were ALWAYS stored as 32-bit quantities, i.e. it had a strict flat 32-bit address space. This meant that the 68000 WAS and ALWAYS WILL BE a 32-bit microprocessor.

Yes,this means that the Genesis along with the Neogeo have 32-bit cpus for their main cpu,with 16-bit data buses. The Amiga and Macintosh also used these 68000 cpus. Most arcade games in the late 80ies- early 90ies did too,either using the 8-16 bit data bus versions or the 68020 32-bit data bus versions.

This method is still used today,though it is no longer refered to the DATA bus,but instead refered to the Front Side Bus,with offerings like the 200FSB or 266FSB Thunderbird on up to varring FSB A64s causing higher or lower prices. People never are informed enough because their interest does not seem to extend past the game systems box spec wise. They just take  a game companies word for it and leave it at that. They only seemed to assume the 68000 was used in arcade games with 16-bit graphics so it must be  a 16-bit cpu,which is stupid basic logic.

As for your backwards logic as to whats 16-bit or 32-bit,you have your own opinion to what you think or feel about these games for sure,but that opinion isnt fact,the facts are in the specs and proven in alot of the stated above titles released for said systems in my previous post here.While the 32X and Jaguar didnt have tons of titles showing of their power,they did have a few that showed that they were easily able to do at least 32-bit gaming graphically and in quality.

[Michael Helgeson]

In my mind, the Dreamcast is part of the same generation as PS2/GC/Xbox.

As for the Dreamcast:
CPU: SH-4 RISC CPU with 128 Bit FPU functions
Graphics Engine: PowerVR2 CLX2. Yes,its easily in the same generation as the PS2-XBox,esp hardware wise. the Power VR2 GPU used in Dreamcast/Naomi/Sammy Atomaswave ended up proving to actually be a more powerful gpu then the GS gpu found in the PS2 in the end. It was a very close performer to the Radeon hybrid found in the Gamecube,espically if the Power VR gpu is overclocked.

As for the Pc-Engine/Turbografx:
Yes the main cpu was a 8-bit HuC6280A HOWEVER the graphics cpus were both a 16-bit HuC6260 and a 16-bit HuC6270A. So when NEC touted 16-bit graphics they indeed were not lying. As for the 8-bit cpu,being able to run at a tad over 7 mhz more then made up for the fact it was 8-bit.

But don't worry, I won't call you stupid.  Wink

Not sure of your meaning there considering your the one calling 32-bit systems 16-bit.... But hey,since your mis-informed and have weird mis conseptions of how game systems hardware works or have a lack of knowledge of these systems specs I wont call you retarded.

[FM-77]

Oh my, this thread is severely broken. What happened? 

Edit: Well that's odd. It fixed itself. Ignore/delete this post please.

Oh and Star Fox rules!!

[Joe Redifer]

Just as long as nobody starts going into the "Neo Geo is 24-bit" nonsense I'll be happy.  Man, how many bits would the Saturn be if they added up all of the processors like that?

[guyjin]

32*5 or so procs = 160 bits!!!!!!! more powerful than the PS3!!!!!!!!!!!! 

[Michael Helgeson]

Yea like Atari said,DO THE MATH!

[Black Tiger]

In my mind, the Dreamcast is part of the same generation as PS2/GC/Xbox.

As for the Dreamcast:
CPU: SH-4 RISC CPU with 128 Bit FPU functions
Graphics Engine: PowerVR2 CLX2. Yes,its easily in the same generation as the PS2-XBox,esp hardware wise. the Power VR2 GPU used in Dreamcast/Naomi/Sammy Atomaswave ended up proving to actually be a more powerful gpu then the GS gpu found in the PS2 in the end. It was a very close performer to the Radeon hybrid found in the Gamecube,espically if the Power VR gpu is overclocked.

As for the Pc-Engine/Turbografx:
Yes the main cpu was a 8-bit HuC6280A HOWEVER the graphics cpus were both a 16-bit HuC6260 and a 16-bit HuC6270A. So when NEC touted 16-bit graphics they indeed were not lying. As for the 8-bit cpu,being able to run at a tad over 7 mhz more then made up for the fact it was 8-bit.

But don't worry, I won't call you stupid.  Wink

Not sure of your meaning there considering your the one calling 32-bit systems 16-bit.... But hey,since your mis-informed and have weird mis conseptions of how game systems hardware works or have a lack of knowledge of these systems specs I wont call you retarded.

I was never talking about how hardware worked. I just said how overall released software felt to me for a few consoles.

I was talking about generations, the standard grouping, which unfortunately, back then are named by bits. If a consoles' games feel more like one group than another to me, it has nothing to do with what is technically under the hood.

You summed it up best for me:

Doom,Alien versus Predator,I-War,Battlemorph,Hoverstrike Cd,and Wolfenstien 3d beg to differ,however Id say alot (not all) of the other offerings were more along the Amiga or 16-bit lines.

From what you've said spec-wise though, it sounds like the 32-bit generation, technically is the widest stretching generation in video game history, spanning at least a couple generational leaps in actual visuals.

This is why I'm glad we've finally escaped the bit generations.

The meaning 'there', besides my responding to when you literally called me stupid, was that when you compared graphics using screenshots, you weren't talking about guts/specs, you were talking about how the games looked, and how those 32-bitters were so much better than the 16-bitters, or like a generational step above.

But going by looks alone, and judging only games that actually exist, the Saturn/PSX look like even more of a generational leap over the Jag/32-X than the Jag/32-X look like over the SNES/Genesis.

You even called the SNES/Genesis games ugly and other negative stuff, compared to the nice Jag & 32-X games. Does that mean that you think that the Saturn/PSX make the Jag/32-X games look ugly? Personally, I like them all and don't feel that the PS3 ruins them.

What I always wanted out of 32-bit consoles, besides ranging from flat shaded polys to textured, shaded, lighted 3D games, was more 'high-res' high color games like the later Guilty Gear's.

Castlevania Symphony Of The Night looks like a SNES CD to me(if the SNES CD-ROM really did add processing power like the Sega-CD). Which isn't a bad thing. I'm not one of those losers that calls any game ever released with any sprites whatsoever as having "SNES graphics", but SOTN looks like PCE Drac X with a SNES pallete and effects. But the majority of PSX games feel PSX'y enough to me group the system in the "32-bit" generation.

The Virtua Boy may also be a real 32-bit powerhouse, but it's games never felt like a generational jump over the SNES
to me.

Model 1 & 2 may both be technically 32-bit hardware, but Model 2 is definitely a generational leap in visuals over Model 1 and not just because of the numerical naming.

Where does the Neo Geo fall technically? I'm not a tech head, but from what you described about some of those true 32-bit guts, it sounds like the Neo Geo is firmly entrenched in the 16-bit generation.