The NES taller resolution was used for overscan to spawn sprites more often than not. SMS didn't necessarily need this overscan to spawn sprites properly into memory.
Neither of these systems had 60 frames per second. They had 30 frames x 2 (double scan) per second + 1 blank screen. Each of frames were drawn twice in order to expand the size of the scanlines to fit the television screen. If either actually functioned at 60 FPS then the screen size would be half the size of your television.
@@NinjaNezumi This is not true. The NES, SMSs and pretty much every other classic console and computer put out a progressive scan signal at 60 frames per second. Its half the resolution, but not half the size! It just misses out every other line.
@@Sharopolis I just went back and watched several videos showing how the scans work. They don't miss every other line in how you are suggesting, where it results in 60fps of graphical animation. I wanted to be sure before I responded. I'm also a streamer and have had my own frustrations in dealing with the framerates not being correctly displayed on stream. How the graphics worked is they hit all Odd lines first, then Even lines second. For the Graphics Draw function it's literally only 29.97 herz with a .03 blank cycle. Animation Frame 1: Pass 1 of 59.94: Lines 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17, 19, 21, etc... Pass 2 of 59.94: Lines 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14 Animation Frame 2: Pass 3 of 59.94: Lines 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17, 19, 21, etc... Pass 4 of 59.94: Lines 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14 59.94 herz / 2 = 29.97 + 1 blank frame cycle that lasts 0.06 (when the tubes are resetting). It's functionally 30 fps (29.97 + 0.03), because 1 frame is taking 2 passes to appear on the T.V. IF you killed the second pass, the draw cycles will be twice as fast, even though the TIMING system may be a continuous 59.94 hrz cycle (+0.06). The Atari's blank page cycle is notorious and if a game isn't programmed right you could send inputs into the system while the draw function isn't operating for the sprites. I've argued that Rogers (King of games) was abusing early Atari carts for his impossible scores because you can achieve those scores if you factor in the blank screen glitch. This is the reason why you can't accurately record a classic system at a regular rate of 60fps. The only way to get an accurate display of a classic system game on a streaming platform is if you set your framerate cycle to either 29.97 (+.03 blank) or 59.94 (+.06 blank). Otherwise the flicker will not be picked up by the program properly. If you take a recording of a classic system doing a 29.97 (+.03 blank) you won't drop a single frame of animation, that's because the graphics are functioning at what you would call 30fps due to the double line processing. Now you might argue "That's 60fps because the processor never stops working". But that's wrong. Because FPS refers to graphical framerate of advancement. Not how many times the CRT cycles in 1 second. If the T.V. is drawing the same sprite TWICE over, then that sprite is only shown 30 positions in a period of 1 second. IF the sprite is only drawn once per cycle, then that sprite is shown with 60 different positions in a period of 1 second. Since the tubes are making two passes then the sprite is being drawn twice in the same position, giving an effective framerate for the entire image of 30. I have several games, such as Darkwing Duck, which really suck rocks when you try to record/stream them at 60 fps instead of 59.94 (+0.6) because the i-frame flicker caused by the timing can literally make your character invisible thanks to the refresh rate not being a true 60fps. But, again, if you stream at 29.97 (+0.03 NTSC standard) you won't miss a single frame of animation. There ARE SOME systems that have a TRUE framerate of 59.94 (+0.6) (single pass), but NES and SMS are not one of them.
I will say, the SMS not being able to flip sprites even though it could flip tiles comes as kind of a shock. It just seems like it should be obvious how useful that is.
I know pretty well how MS/GG works and don't know much about the NES. What I can tell for sure though is that if you have a sprite composed of 2x4 tiles (for example Mario or Sonic), flipping each tile individually certainly won't result in creating the mirror image you are expecting. So if NES can indeed flip sprites, it means that is somehow knows "composite" sprites, that are composed of several tiles, and it flips them as well as reorganizing them. For this reason, I can understand while it was not implemented for MS, and the ability of flipping tiles for backgrounds sounds more useful as it saves a ton of memory. I am a bit surprised that MS developers would have to use double the ROM size to store sprites in both direction, while they could flip them at the moment of loading the tile in VRAM, unless it is too slow of course.
I feel like this could be solved with interrupts. I’m not certain how efficient it would be, but they’ve done some AMAZING things with interrupts on that system. For example, they used Horizontal Interrupts to make a Doom-Esque engine work on the system. There was a Disney game that also used them to create some very impressive illusions of depth.
In early ‘92 I swapped my Master System 2 for an NES so I could rent Mario 3 from the video store. I didn’t notice the system differences at the time, it was all about the games.
Stupid argument about "its about the games"... it's extremely stupid and ignorant. The Japanese FamiCom sold 10 million systems in Japan alone from 1983 to 1986 because Nintendo launched with Mario Bros which was a nearly 1:1 conversion from the arcade... essentially Nintendo was initially offering the "arcade at home" strategy to Japanese families and by "families" that includes the entire family, males, females, young and older people who would give videogames a try unlike how eventually Nintendo of America would just only do marketing specifically towards "young boys" which seems vague until you notice that they were aiming at younger than 10 years old ages and then somehow it became that 4 year olds to 10 year olds were their target demographic... which was why the vast majority of NES videogames being hyped ended up being very childish games that toddlers could play even when an 8 year old who got a NES in 1985 was no longer 8 years old by 1989. So you claiming it was all about the games only proves sheer idiocy. Nintendo had early solid launch games in Japan which earned them 10 million systems sold which earned them loyal third party alliances which earned them certain game devs who fully utilized the capability of the FamiCom NES and eventually these devs utilized the add on chips to further enhance the capabilities BEYOND what the NES could do because it was less of a risk given that there were more than 12 million ACTIVE FamiCom owners/buyers in Japan alone... which is why many games were able to earn huge sales and big sequels. Meanwhile Sega's SG-1000 was not as strong specs as the NES despite both launching the same day in 1983... arguably Nintendo had better arcade games and better arcade clout than Sega up to 1983... thus the SG-1000 found itself not looking as capable as the Japanese FamiCom... which was the prime reason why Sega headquarters Japan had to re-engineer the SG-1000 into the Mark III aka Sega Master System and launch in 1985 Japan... Being that there were other language barriers and distance limitations as well as budgets, Sega felt it wad logical to launch the Mark III in the U.S.A. first which only happened when the MK III was redesigned and launched in 1986, a year later than Japan only for the SMS to be seen as a system that didn't "have enough games"... because it was NEW... which is why your argument fails. The SMS was not even OFFICIALLY launched in the U.K./Europe, Australia and Brazil... actually it wad hardly available in Canada and Mexico which is North American region due to dumb, inept, incompetent management staff at 80s Sega of America who didn't know how to distribute the SMS and do the proper marketing work and why management fell to Tonka Toys and why the WEAKER Atari 7800 due to having clout and lower price ended up outselling the SMS in North America... Meanwhile Nintendo of America was busy expanding distribution of the NES into Canada and Mexico... eventually having official Nintendo Power Magazine and Nintendo Club magazine in Mexico while Sega's newsletters were mail only even by 1990. Actually let's use the games argument... by 1988 Sega MegaDrive launch, that means you won't buy the MegaDrive because "there's only three games" and Nintendo has more...
@@apollosungod2819 except it was about the games to many. Just because you are going into specs doesn't mean others were. Majority of people bought a system for the game selection.
@@apollosungod2819 The Master System as a huge success in Europe, especially France and the UK it was the highest selling console until 1996 with the Megadrive second, then SNES. The NES release was a disaster in Europe. It was late and obsolete. Europe still had Master System games until 1996 like Streets of Rage 2, Sonic 2, Sonic Chaos etc
I love the subtle brute honesty you have in these videos, commenting "if the video is longer I'll make more money", "this was a waste of time but that's youtube isn't it?". UA-camrs always hide and pretend it's not that way, but come ooon you can see right through them. I think tou once said "I don't think I'm anybody's favorite youtuber", that was pretty sad 'cause I like your videos a lot! You have the right balance between technical details and keeping things easy to understand, you put your personality in but don't lose focus trying to be under the spotlight, you don't obsess on details and keep a good constant pace, you're realistic but laid back, and on top, the info is really good. I knew Master System was more powerful but I still wanted to hear your take on it, and now I know it can flip backgrounds but not sprites, double sprite sizes, has an easier time chopping the screen!
I did not know the master system couldnt flip its sprites. This is why they took 'advantage' of this to show different sprites facing left and right in some games. Also worth mentioning the master system came a few years after the nes so it is expected its hardware to be a bit more powerful, just like when the snes came a few years after the genesis.
@@miriamalmeida6687 a propria nintendo aposta muito mais na qualidade de seus softwares do que de seus hardwares. Entao acredito que ela tenha feito o snes com essa mentalidade tambem. Pelo que observo com relação a essas discussoes é que o genesis tem uma resolução um pouco maior, um processador notoriamente mais rápidomas com o snes sendo superior em todos os outros aspectos. Ouvi falar tambem que é mais facil desenvolver pro genesis do que pro snes, tanto que temos hoje muito mais jogos novos pro console da sega. Adoraria ver a cena indie investir mais em jogos de snes tb.
@@protocetidyeah. the SNES’s design is bottlenecked by last-minute hardware design flaws. had Nintendo stuck to their original plans the SNES would have been far more powerful than it is today
The Master System was a very good and well thought out hardware. I am myself developing a game on Game Gear, a console that amazes me. No wonder the Game Gear, which is basically a portable MS, could hand its own and compare pretty favorably with many ports from the 16 bits consoles, as well as exclusives (it has a lot that people don't know about). By simply expanding the color palette from 64 to 4096, and reducing the resolution, the original MS really shone again.
It was aside form the audio. Had the original system had FM sound I think it would have went much further than it did. Honestly what killed them was not having Mario. Even Hudson had Bonk and a game that was just like zelda but looked 20x better thanks to the PCE/TG16 512 colors, and still it failed because those two reasons.
Definitely feel like the whole story wasn't being told when it came to the differences in audio (ignoring Japanese-exclusive scenarios). Sure, it was established that the NES audio was better. But it really needed to be underscored that the main issue with the SMS's sound was that it was flatly incapable of providing bass. I think the lowest frequency those square waves could reach was something like 100Hz? *Multiple* octaves were left on the table. And what makes this worse is that really good bass is precisely what the NES's triangle channel is excellent at providing. It's simply not enough to say the NES's audio was more capable-the SMS's sound was basically hamstrung by unnecessary limitations.
IMHO they are basically equally matched in the audio dept. Both are very decidedly 8 bit in their sound., Or, more accurately, even though the NES is technically "better," the Mark III is "good enough" for an 8 bit system. Even the supposedly superior to both of them SID chip is still an 8 bit sound chip and only rarely really comes out ahead (though a coupe of Hubbard's tunes do really show off the SID)
@@tarstarkusz The amusing thing about the SID observation is that you can program a SID to accurately reproduce any of the NES's voices, including the bassy triangle (see: Super Mario Bros. ported to C64). Games, of course, opted to use the more specialized functions of the chip, rather than static waveforms, and so most of the sounds you got out of the thing had that tinny, midrange flavor that is singularly SID.
@@Asterra2 What specialized functions exactly? Whatever waveforms you got out of the chip you created yourself. I think the SID chip was the best during that era with Master Systems being the distant, distant third... even with the FM chip it's still in third place, just not that distant.
@@JoypadDivison Among the three chips being discussed, the SID was the only one which provided controls for dynamic waveforms-both the 2A03 and the SN76489 relied upon static waveforms, with the latter limited specifically to squares. My observation underscores the point that game developers taking advantage of the SID's dynamic capabilities tended to forego any thought of lower frequencies by consequence (talking the 20 to 60 Hz range). Not always, but very typically. Whenever low frequencies were used, the bass quality of them was diminished by the timbre provided by the dynamic modifications.
Sega's 8-bit console dominated the NES in terms of color palette. but it was the opposite during the 16 bit era. I was a "system wars" nerd as a kid, and I remember going around quoting the 32,768 figure from the SNES to assert my console's dominance.
Yeah, I think Nintendo learned from Sega. But in that time, NES lost it's iron grip on devs and so the Genesis could compete, something the SMS couldn't really do.
Personally I think that if you could somehow have given the Mark III (with it's FM sound capability) the developer support the NES and Famicom had, and if you could have taken the silly Master System controller away and given it something much better, then the Master System would have been the dream console in the 8-Bit days.
The FM sound is overrated if you ask me, I've compared the FM tracks in Phantasy Star and a few other games to the ones that we got and it doesn't really seem like an improvement...it just needed gamepads with the pause/start button on them and it would've done fine, also a peripheral like the Power Base Converter but to play Game Gear games on it would've been nice too.
I feel like another part of the story is that the number of developers on the platform had a real impact on Graphic and sound quality as well. Sketchy licensing practices meant that Nintendo had access to a much broader array of developers to push this system to its maximum. A comparatively large number of in-house games had to be made at Sega… which had pros and cons… it definitely made things more homogenous at Sega but limited the innovation that diversity can give.At the end of the day, The person using the technology and the techniques they use are more influential than the raw power of the medium they are using. Leonardo da Vinci using an eight color palette would likely school me even if I had access to 1000 colors.
Agreed. Nintendo had major studios psuedo locked down from competing against them and many dare not damage that relationship to develop for an unproven SMS. IIRC these agreements were largely gone by 90 and 91 when the Genesis started getting some serious 3rd party support and took a huge(and for a time majority) part of the US video game market from Nintendo. I imagine had the SMS been able to release a good number of the NES 3rd party hits, the SMS may not have overtaken the NES, but it would have been fairly close in the US. Yes you would miss out on Nintendo developed games, but with the increased revenue, Sega could have produced more 1st party bangers to compliment the increased 3rd party bangers.
Fun fact: The Sega Genesis/Mega Drive is almost fully backwards-compatible with the SMS, and it achieves this by incorporating an entire SMS into its design. There's a discrete Z80 CPU on the motherboard and an SN76489 PSG integrated into the video display processor's chip. The VDP itself is fully backwards-compatible with the one in the original SMS, as they're both evolutions of Texas Instruments TMS9918 display chip. When it's playing SMS games, the 68000 CPU and the YM2612 FM synth chip are idle. When it's playing Genesis games, the Z80 is used as an audio co-processor, and both the FM synth and PSG sound chips are used in games.
@@jasonlee7816 The Genesis/Megadrive actually used the same combo as many of the arcade machines of the day. Sega's own System 16/System 18 and Hang On/Outrun Superscalars , Capcom's CPS 1/CPS 2 and even SNKs NEO GEO had a 68000 as its main cpu and Z-80 helping out with some audio duty. There were some difference in memory available, speed/number of the processors and even custom chips, but the base was the similar. The Genesis hosted various ports from these arcade boards that were pretty faithful to the originals: Altered Beast, Golden Axe, Wonder Boy: Monster Lair, Super Hang On, Outrun, Forgotten Worlds, Ghouls N Ghosts, Street Fighter 2 Championship Edition, Strider, Mercs, Fatal Fury, Fatal Fury 2, Samurai Shodown, Art of Fighting, World Heroes...
@@jasonlee7816 yeah, happens with all of the consoles though, the programmers get better at extracting performance out of them as time goes on. There's a dev out there who has made an F zero demo on stock Genesis hardware, looks really close to the SNES game.
Ironically, the SN76489's audio is better utilized when it's not the main sound chip. The YM2612 does the heavy lifting while the SN76489 is essentially the vocal lead.
@@jasonlee7816 Are you caught up on same and similar? Is it EXACTLY the SAME 68000 with the same speed across the board? No. Is it EXACTLY the SAME Z80 with the same clock speed? No. It is however the SAME base combo; a Motorola 68000 main CPU paired with a Zilog Z80. It means that a lot of the base coding done for the arcade version can transfer over to the Genesis port. Sega based the Genesis/Megadrive on their system 16 arcade board (Shinobi, Altered Beast). Beyond the base, the arcade boards had custom chips and hardware for larger color palettes, higher resolutions, better sound, more sprites, hardware scaling and rotation, more memory...etc. Given the shortcomings of the Genesis compared to the different arcade boards, the quality of the port will vary. A lot of the Genesis ports were very faithful to the arcade; -in most cases there was a lack of color, and a difference in sound, -in some cases levels were altered or missing because of memory constraints, -in many cases games were scaled back because the console lacked the hardware to duplicate the effects -in all cases the ability of the programmer affects how faithful a port is
Hardware wise, SMS is clearly superior. To be fair, the master system was sega's second attempt to go up against the NES. think of it as the 8 bit dreamcast.
Even with no NES expansion chips to confuse things, (as mentioned in the video) the SMS' eating into its own VRAM is its biggest graphical limitation. A 2-player game, and one player is pointing to the left? Need 2 sets of tiles, one for each player. A game like Ironman Stewart's Off-Road, with its info screens showing 4 players of different colours, 4 different coloured fonts, etc. can be done with a single set of tiles on the NES; If it had been 4 players on the SMS, it would need all the graphics, font, etc. doubled (or quadrupled if not using both palettes) in VRAM to get the different colours for each. That's just one example that immediately springs to mind.
Though without expansion chips the most advanced game possible is honestly the original Mario brothers. Every other game after it had to use memory mappers. :/
@@Roninkinx And every other game after Ghost House on the SMS had to use memory mappers too. Or are we forgetting that the SMS likewise needed mappers to make anything above and beyond the MyCard games?
Could you not flip tiles using programming techniques after all that's what some software houses did on the old home computers like the spectrum, Amstrad and others not including the Commodore 64 as that had sprite flipping built in if I remember right.
@@-Steven- Flipping tiles is not the problem. It's slightly computationally expensive, so that could be a problem in fast-paced games; however, VRAM storage for left-facing and right-facing sprites if needed simultaneously is the problem.
A few interesting points that were not mentioned. SMS background tiles can choose between the 1st and 2nd palette, which allows 32 colors on screen. Also, the bulky border around the screen selects a color from the sprite palette, which can be color 0. Background tile attributes additionally allowed some impressive sprite masking. The SMS's 256x224 and 256x240 modes were rarely used, because the first iterations of the SMS don't support them. This incompatibility even returned on the Power Base Converter for the MD/Genesis. The NES has 256x240 pixel nametables, but NTSC systems crop the image to 256x224. Both consoles had similar background scrolling capabilities, and both had the limitation of not being able to overwrite vertical scrolling mid-frame. On the NES this could be circumvented with some H-blank trickery, while on the SMS it's still deemed impossible. The FM unit for the Sega Mark III had the limitation of only being active, if the regular PSG sound was deactivated. The rather special japanese SMS could play both simultaneously, but then again would create incompatibilities to the Mark III. This commonly caused modded games to have no sound effects if they used FM music. It's unfortunate in my opinion how the 2 systems are not compared more commonly as competitors and the NES sees alot more attention among retro fans.
Just one extra annotation: SMS has a special flag to lock scroll the first two upper line of tiles or the last six rows of tiles vertically. Very handy for shutemups hud elements.
For me it was maybe the whole experience (marketing,packaging,user experience,controllers) that attracted me to Nintendo. Things turned around a bit when the Sega Genesis arrived and their marketing and design got much better.
As an American I don't even remember the master system. I love these videos. I feel like I'm learning about tech I missed out on, yet it was a part of my generation
Here in Brazil, the Sega representive Tec Toy still releasing vesions of Master System and Mega Drive (Genesis in the US). I had a famous famiclone, but the little I played in MS (I played in the rental hour game) was good.
I was the only kid in my town that I know of growing up that had SMS but one thing I do remember is while everyone was playing Double Dragon on the NES I finally got mine in the mail for the SMS I couldn't believe how much better it was on the SMS. I don't even recall the NES version being 2 player.
Thank you for mentioning the more robust instruction set of the MOS 6502 vs the Zilog Z80. People see an 8bit CPU and assume clock speed is all that's important! Drives me nuts.
People see 16 bit consoles and assume the same thing sadly. The SNES was slower in clock speed but the efficiency of the chip let it do slightly faster computations. Biggest problem(or strength) was that most graphic effects were effectively commands, while you had to program everything out for the genesis which lead to more robust effects if the programmer was talented….But Sega took that idea and cranked it upto 11 for the Saturn soooo
Another thing to consider about the SMS sound is that it had a lower note range, so the music ends up sounding high pitched. It's a shame since the other aesthetics of the console are so good
Yep, and even with the FM expansion board, the YM2413 can't change instruments, so even if technically more advanced, it just doesn't sound that nice. SMS has a special nostalgic sound, but the NES is just more capable of producing diverse sound.
@@BasementBrothers while there is some very good stuff for the FM expansion (the Sonic FM mod is amazing), it just doesn't give me the "8 bit vibe" like PSG sound. I remembered there is also the noise mode that allows the chip to make bass sounds, but it takes away one channel and it wasn't very used.
Not sure if you mention this in part 2 or not (haven't watched it yet), but a major advantage of the NES for me personally was the controller. For one thing, I think most people would agree that the D-pad on the NES is noticeably better. It's just easier to tell what direction you're pressing with a cross, as opposed to a concave rounded-cornered square. Also, the NES had a Start and Select button on the controller itself. I mean, just having the convenience of being able to pause a game without having to walk over to the console was a huge deal. The Start and Select buttons were admittedly on the squishy side and in a somewhat awkward location, making them a poor choice for any action that needed to be activated continuously, but they worked well in a pinch for moves activated somewhat sparingly, like the uppercut in Punch-Out!!, or toggling your active weapon in games like Batman. Actually, if Streets of Rage for SMS had used an NES controller, the controls from the Genesis version could have been left basically intact. Select could have been used to activate the special attack. Another hardware related consideration not directly related to processing power is the cartridge slots of each system. When comparing the original NES cartridge cartridge slot to the SMS's, the SMS is the clear winner because it doesn't have the stupid spring loaded pins that eventually fail to make proper contact with the cartridge. Even back in the 80's this caused issues with games not booting properly, causing gamers to resort to the whole "pull the game out and blow in it" tactic. Meanwhile, I can't ever remember having done that with any other console my family owned, because most games booted fine the first time. The redesigned NES with the dog bone controllers removed this issue, but it came out so much later that I don't think it counts. To this day, the NES I grew up with still won't boot games most of the time because of that cartridge slot mechanism. To quote a famous nerd, what were they thinking?! As a kid, my only exposure to the SMS was through my grandfather, who was a big gamer back in the day, and I remember being very impressed by the graphical fidelity of many of the games. I was absolutely blown away by the port of Double Dragon for the SMS, especially compared to the NES, not only due to the improved visuals but the inclusion of simultaneous coop, as the NES version should have had. Having said that, I felt like the SMS library was generally underwhelming. There were fantastic games to be found on it, for sure, but the NES just seemed to have more of what I wanted. Plus, the NES didn't have ALF. My word, ALF was atrocious.
As a Homebrewer, the SMS is better solely on having more memory :) In fact, I'm struggling to reduce my memory usage (currently at ~5KB) to fit on the NES
vary many games on the NES used extra memory in the cartridge. The system supported upto 40kb ram total. And tile memory could be extended upto 10kb i believe.
@@cleidsonaraujopeixoto163 thank you, but I actually gave up on the NES just yesterday. Producing an enhanced port for the MD seems like a better use of my time (since the game won't run on a MD, as I'm using a legacy mode from the SG-1000). Sure, I could require an enhanced chip, but just like JM Coulon said, what's the fun in it?
@@DanielMonteiroNit Você podia postar esse trampo no UA-cam! Aqui no Brasil o SMS era MUITO popular como vc deve saber, não sei ai em Portugal, mas se fizer uma serie mostrando isso ia ser dahora!
I like the way you compared the systems using just stock specs in this video and no enhancement chips, but in the overall assessment, I feel it's fair game to use the enhancement chips. Looking forward to the followup video.
You sure are treating us to a lot of new videos recently! If you want some more video ideas, I'd love to see comparisons like this between other systems as well (I'd especially like to see handhelds - Game Boy/Color vs. Game Gear perhaps? Atari Lynx?) There's something refreshing and unique about the way you cover retro systems & hardware. Most other channels would focus more on the nostalgia factor and prominent software releases, but you approach the subject with a much more objective and technical analysis. Definitely a niche that I'm happy to see filled, as someone looking to get into game development! Really helps put into perspective the kinds of limitations that these old games were working with.
You said it. I'm looking forward to a Genesis vs. SNES comparison where someone actually mentions the SNES can only access two sprite tile sizes at a time, and has serious vblank related issues. Or mentions the Genesis's bizarre low resolution mode, which somehow has less sprites than the high resolution mode. And if he tackles handhelds? That'd be a dream come true.
Look at Wonderboy 3: The Dragon's Trap though. Some sprites are actually different when facing left or right. Shion is right handed whichever way he's facing.
Great video, as always. I very much look forward to part 2. That said, I always wonder what could have been if the Master System had the developer support back then and the homebrew community activity right now that the NES enjoyed.
The scrolling seam wasn't a problem until LCD panels and emulation. The seam was hidden in the overscan behind the CRTs cabinet frame. So it wasn't really a problem of the era, but it is visible more today with modern displays.
Scrolling was a real problem back then if you had a machine like MSX,SG1000,Atari ST,Spectrum or Amstrad CPC and the old PCs that didnt have hardware sprites on their video system. NES,Master System,C64 and even Atari 2600 had hardware sprites hence they had no problem with their scrolling.
@@vasileios6301 yes, but my comment was in direct response to the statement in the video that you would see artifacts on the edge of the screen. That was not the case on the CRT TVs of the era. As such, any artifacts that are outside the title safe area of the screen shouldn't be considered.
That's not really true--you can definitely see it on a CRT, although it would depend on the TV you used. From what I gather European/PAL TVs generally had less overscan so it might have been more noticeable here.
@@todesziege can you see it, or was it intentional are two different things. You can absolutely see it on a modern display, you might have been able to set it if an older CRT drew the overscan region onto the screen, but it wasn't intended that that region should be visible.
The Master System was very similar to the MSX computer. SEGA was competing against the Famicom so they launched something that allowed easy porting of MSX games, so the console could quickly gain a lot of good games. They did the same thing with the Genesis, which was 68K like their arcade boards (System 16/18), as well as some other arcade systems, and of course the X68000.
I feel like they really play off of each other’s weaknesses, in all except controls. The NES ultimately wins out because the pad, despite the corners on it, was ridiculously more responsive, and didn’t require touching the console at all to do something as necessary as…pause it.
@@Roninkinx i think the SMS as well as the original Famicom, was designed for japanese kids gaming habits. With the tv placed directly on the kid's room floor and sitting next to the console it was very easy for a jspanese kid to stretch a little to push the pause button.
It's definitely bad, but at least the cable length tended to be decent so pulling up your SMS beside you wasn't horrible. Taking your hands off the controller to pause was still pretty lame.
Great video! One thing I'd criticise is (and I might be in the minority): If you could add the game title and platform to the examples. Some games looked like they're fun, but I'll probably never find them again
Something people usually overlook is the fact the NES controller has 2 more input buttons (Start and Select) and that added so much like in-game menus or pausing. The SMS, if not mistaken (please correct me if I'm wrong) doesn't even have a software pausing system, hence the Pause button being in the console, not in the controller, to actual freeze all the processing like a hardware halt.
@@GladeSwope It was common on several other Japanese consoles at the time; Japanese homes are comparatively smaller than American ones, so it was assumed you'd be sitting close to the TV with the console within reach. It's also reflected in the shorter controller cables.
This was a fun comparison. I really think the details beneath the main specs are so important. I know with Mega Drive vs. SNES, the details make the MD compete better than it seems on the surface, and makes it more impressive to me. Here, I don't think those details(like the tile flipping) quite close the technical gap between the 8-bit machines, but it is fascinating to see those differences and how even the NES had some tricks up its sleeve. You could even argue that the NES was better suited to the small ROM sizes of the time. I had a Master System growing up before getting the NES late, but I stayed a Sega guy. I've also come to appreciate SMS PSG music again lately, but it's definitely a weaker point and the NES wins there. Limited as it was, there are some good tunes. The SMS limited tile flipping reminds of of the PCE having a similar, if not the same, limitation. I'd bet it was just a compromise they had to make with what they had available at the time. I'd bet they sacrificed the flipping for the colors. Surely, they'd want to have both, but all those sprite-based consoles were about compromises.
True; especially a lot of early Master System games felt quite lacking in content, with arcade ports often missing a lot of stuff. Those extra tile colors basically meant double the file size.
I remember the varieties of colors and visual texturing created therewith on the SMS was a whole world beyond what the NES could do, but that games often just felt better and tighter to play on the NES even though they were rarely pretty. For some reason, control on the SMS felt looser, jankier and just less well designed than it ever did for comparable styles of games on the NES. Maybe it was just me? I dunno, but it still feels that way even on emulators to me, so I suspect basic game engineering differences.
From what I've noticed a lot of the games in the Sega Master system graphics wise look superior to the NES you've got some of the late Master system releases that almost look as good as a 16-bit release
@@freddyvidz it almost seems like even though double dragon for the NES is two player and mighty final fight as I remember is only one player it's probably the better of the two
The Master System used 4-bit (16 color) tiles, which is the same as most 16-bit systems use, so its not a coincidence. Mighty Final Fight looks great for what it is, but by no means would anybody confuse it for a 16-bit game.
@@freddyvidz There's the NES arcade version which iirc did have 2 player. Very odd, seeing as the home cart didn't. *Edit - Playchoice 10. sorry, couldn't remember the name,
Having coded both 6502 and Z80 in assembly for years, both have advantages and both have disadvantages but I'd always throw my hat toward the Z-80. Love the 6502 for it's RISC like speed but the Z80 has by far a more robust instruction set, many more registers and most important, the I/O mapping gives a very nice edge to the Z-80. All the peripherals are left out of the memory map. I always like the SMS in the color department because having both systems, the NES colors always looked washed out.
Interresting point of view. Why then Z-80 was barely mentioned in breakthrough 8 bit era games everywhere? We have games on 6502 looking like 16 bit even on this channel and very few Z-80 based and barely matching. Is it because good CPU was commonly paired with weak PPU or used in less popular devices?
@@danielhawkings7680 So which fallacy is this? Argument from authority or argument from popularity? Listing some games you claim look 16 bit might have been a better argument but I got a say...sounds like a fan boy speaking. (sarcasm on)After all Windows is the best OS because it's the most popular right( sarcasm off?)
@@danielhawkings7680 The Z80 is everywhere. It's one of the most used cpu's ever. It's extremely common in arcade hardware throughout the 80's .If you look at games that used it in the late 80's they look "16 bit". The reason there are so many limit pushing games for NES and C64 is because of the long life span of those systems. Games were being published for them well into the 16 bit era and developers had to find ways to make them look relevant. The CPU isn't the determining factor in any of this.
Very interesting! Any advice for someone wanting to get into dabbling in this? I don’t know low level languages sadly high level is where I’ve messed around..
finally a complete and competent comparison video about two big classic monsters, well done! I've always considered the two systems comparable, with nes beeing more stylish and cool having ton of personality, and sms more similar to a missed 16 bit system. infact thanx to more versatile colour handling sms had conversions expecially for euro market very similar to 16 bits counterparts, let's say speedball 2, robocod, zool, lemmings, or kick off, they looks very similar to atari st or amiga. in sound territories undoubtly nes wins, the sample channel makes difference even into sfx stuff e.g. doors opening in castlevania...and even in music, not only for sampled tribal percussive stuff, e.g. topgun second mission soundtrack has gorgeous sampled orchestra hits and slap bass, playing musical notes. sms can play samples but leaves to cpu no cycles to do anything useful, some old cga dos games with sampled fx from pc speaker had same behaviour of cpu.
The Master System certainly has brighter colors, sometimes even too much (I'm thinking about the red screen which appears in Black Belt between stages). I love both systems though.
I'd like to see someone recreate the first level of the Mario 1-3 games on the NES to play on the Master System. Try to get it to look and feel as close as possible to the NES version. Just to see what that would look and play like.
It would be difficult to get the exact mechanics like the slowdown from running and that unique nes precision I’ve seen superboy series which are clones that can’t get th
I never played nor owned a SMS in my entire life thus-far, and yet I know for a fact that the only design-choice I hate about it is that the Start Button is part of the Console itself rather than the Controllers!
The biggest point is the type of games that were coming up on these systems. Many of the games that were cross platform at the time were significantly different in their gameplay due to how the systems differed and where they were popularly sold. For example, Afterburner for example is going to look better on the master system than on the NES because of the color and and resolution when compared to the arcade counterpart of the game. Same game, different experience.
Can't wait for part 2! Also, perhaps mention how the NES had Select and Start buttons. For those interested, I made an in-depth video comparing games for the two systems: ua-cam.com/video/f4PptW-4cdw/v-deo.html
@@TheDneavesBut the NES had the power button and the reset button, plus the thing you push to lower the cartridge down, and also the lid that you push open and closed. Plus 2 controllers with 4 buttons each, for a total of 12 things to push not counting the D pad. Master System had power, pause, and reset, plus 2 controllers with 2 buttons each, for a total of 7.
The NES gave us eight 4-color palettes; four for background tiles and four for sprites. The SNES gave us 16 16-color palettes; eight for background tiles and eight for sprites. Sega Master System gave us two 16-color palettes. Sega Genesis had 4 16-color palettes; 2 for background tiles and 2 for sprites.
The difference here is Nintendo (wisely IMO) focused on sound and music as well as efficiency, while Sega focused on graphics. The end result? Well it speaks for itself. Super Mario Bros. Overworld theme is known by like 80% of the planet. Sega didn't get anything as iconic until the Genesis. And even then, they always lagged behind in popularity. I would argue that Nintendo knew what it was doing in this regard. Graphics are second to sound design. This is a lesson any game developer should take note of.
Perhaps only in the USA, because here in Europe, nobody really cared about the NES or even Nintendo. The SMS was king and for that same reason its sountracks are quite well known over here. I'm 44 years old now and never had a friend, cousine or neighbour who had a NES.
For my part the best thing about the Master system except the lower picture height is the built in support for RGB, Even the SMS2 is RGB capable with some simple modding giving it the absolute quality on a CRT. What I like on the NES is it´s good audio and full screen picture that is still pretty good, and the Master system for it´s built in picture quality capability and you can enhance the quality of the audio as well if you tap into the primary audio chip as well. for me the NES is the winner in terms of audio and gameplay but the Sega absolutely destroys in built in picture quality (RGB)
@@t0biascze644 I think you mix this with the yellow Composite output the NES came with which is not RGB. I live in Europe and have never seen any unmodified NES console have RGB. The difference between composite and RGB is huge when it comes to picture quality and you need 4 signals for this to work. Composite sync with chrominance and luminance signal and the 3 color outputs Red Green and Blue. Thing is that the NES is not even capable of making this signal without a modchip with a chip that takes this raw signal directly from the NES PPU chip and converts it to RGB. The master system have all signals directly on the chip but the MS2 console does not have the external components built on to the mainboard other than the shitty RF modulator so to get RGB or composite output you need to build these yourself but you won’t need a modchip for that since you already have this on the build in chip. But the result is absolutely amazing.
@@peteanderson2533 Absolutely. I began my Sega experience with the MS2 console with only RF picture and even then I thought it looked pretty bad. My first mod way later was to add Composite video and I was amazed how much better it got. And later I put the RGB mod to it and was like OMG how is it even possible to be so much better than composite. It’s insane and really fun to see and experience
I had a Master System and NZ Story too. I liked it and the mk1 had those cool card games. Memorable titles for me are Lucky Dime Caper, Sonic Chaos, Psycho Fox, and Rastan.
When us kids saw Super Mario that's what we wanted.. most of us didn't even know the master system existed until we were teenagers. Nintendo had the marketing that most of us saw making us want a NES..
Audio: Yeah, I know the SMS chip was inferior and the manifestation of that was often how darn similar music sounded across the library. Having grown up with an SMS though for some reason it's music is more endearing to me. Specifically Phantasy Star of course. I found an OST of the JP version played on the FM Synth Upgrade module and... it just sounds wrong to me.
10:39 " The master System cant do this " As can be seen right here 4:51 - You can see in this SMS game they have not bothered add in sprite/animation for walking left. So when he walks left. He faces right, but moves to the left.
And then there's the game packaging. While U.S. releases had rather plain artwork, Europe and Brazil saw much more colorful cover art. Here in the states it has always been easier to find SMS releases complete as opposed to those for the NES, as the NES packaging tended to be thrown away. While it's true that the Yamaha FM sound chip was only built into the Japanese SMS (I own one), many western SMS game releases had the code for FM sound still in the game. The order I bought my 8-bit consoles: Atari 2600, Western NTSC SMS Model 1, NES Model 1, Atari 7800, NES Model 2, Japanese SMS. I can tell you that the Model 1 SMS is far more reliable than the Model 1 NES (those darn pins!). My original Model 1 SMS and 7800 are still going strong! The Japanese SMS also has built-in 3D and Rapid Fire hardware, and native backwards compatibility with games for the Sega SG-1000, SC-3000, Mark III, and rare Othello Multivision. The 7800 has native backwards compatibility with games for the VCS/2600. I have no problems playing most PAL releases on my Western NTSC SMS (some 3D games have problems though as I use an HD flatscreeen). I've never tried to play PAL releases in a 2600, but all PAL 2600 releases that I've tried on my 7800 play fine. Sometimes with PAL games they initially come up in black & white, but if I turn my 7800 off and then back on they usually come up in color. I haven't tried any PAL NES games on my Western NES consoles.
Yes and no Awesome Sound People still making some great C64 games - lots - not just a few Longevity is Huge Joystick was 1 button It would make an interesting video
@@nattila7713 not to forget with a 4 colour limitation per cell & 3 colour sprite limitation! .. but that's a home computer from 1982! By that standard, it's more than just fine. Plus being the most successful single spec computer of all time, they've found ways of seriously pushing it wayyy past what was intended.
@@MrLtia1234 yes, I know.... still for me it was color palette. 16 quickly became boring, especially due to RF signal you must have avoided lots of combinations. I could lived with the other limitations IF there was a 64-256 palette to choose from. dreaming of a childhood I never had :D
I like SMS sound, but in my mind, the main place where the NES really has the SMS beat is sound. Even if we consider the Japan-only FM sound provided by the YM2413, the fact that the instruments aren't changeable really puts it below on-board NES sound in the end. The FM instruments on the YM2413 may be technically more advanced technology, but they just don't sound good. Just not that impressive. And this is coming from a lover of SMS sound. The NES just does it better.
The FM wasn't very interestingly used in the SMS games though, but if you look for MSX computer games with this chip you can find much better music made with it.
@@wolfboy527 Yes, and the NES often used a recorded sample for percussion (Sunsoft even used samples for the bass). The SMS couldn't do that -- recorded voices on the SMS required the whole game to pause. Instead the stock SMS just uses the white noise channel for percussion.
great video! would love to see one with NES vs GAMEBOY because those are not very clear cut either. on paper Gameboy has a faster CPU but NES has a faster PPU. also some instructions take more cycles to process on one vs the other.
I bought a 35$ handheld emulator or ebay and i can't be more satisfied with it. I tried about 50 games (PS1,N64,SNES,NES,SMS,GG,GB,GBC,GBA etc etc etc) and they all play great. Best 35$ ive spent in a long time.
An interesting comparison is Wonderboy in monsterland to Saiyūki World with the nes having less colours but more detailed sprites. I don't think there are any motorcycles games on nes such as mach rider that compare to hang on.
Consider though that Wonderboy was a pretty faithful port of an arcade game, while Saiyuki World is taking the same game and changing it's aesthetic and story to fit. Also there are other games you can compare, Outrun on the SMS to Rad Racer on the NES, I always felt the Rad Racer engine could have made a great port of Outrun on the NES, it was really smooth. Sega made an effort to port Outrun to the SMS but it was very choppy.
Great video. The thing I always look at when it comes to the old "playground debate" of which was better, we just have to look at what ultimately made the choice for us...the games. If Nintendo didn't have the monopoly on games, would the Master System had gotten a stronger foothold in the US (Being from the USA, I base this entire point I am making on just my geographical location). Sega just didn't have the support. I would have loved to see which would have turned out better. I am also curious (albeit pointlessly) how the Atari 7800 would have competed if the Trammel family didn't cut the console division down at the knee caps when they took over. The NES and Atari 7800 have almost identical specs minus a few key differences that put the NES just ahead of the 7800.
Atari didnt have good game designers, even before the Tramiel family took over. Their best game developers started Activision, and not too long after that, all the good game designers started to slowly leave to join Activision. Ray Kassar didnt understand game designers, nor did he try to. Jack Tramiel knew where their technical skill was, designing computers, and with Japanese companies making game consoles, knew they couldnt compete against them. Eventually, they took other companies designs for consoles and marketed them (suing these console makers along the way). Even if they did market the 7800 properly, it wouldnt have gained ground in Japan, and Tramiel wouldnt dare market the console there anyways. I argue that if the 7800 was marketed properly, they likely would have had some success in Europe (Jack Tramiel had lots of contacts there) and the US. There was a lot of animosity in North America to the way Nintendo kept an iron fist towards game developers, which is why most of the best games were made by Japanese companies. They wouldnt have beat Nintendo, both because they had all the best games, and because retailers and suppliers would have given Tramiel a hard time after he screwed as many people as he could in the past.
The SMS might be have an edge if game consoles weren't for playing games on. You just can't overcome the kind of support the NES had throughout its life from Konami, Capcom, Hudson, Rare, Tecmo, Sunsoft, Square, Enix, etc. Not to mention that the NES' runaway success spurred the development of advanced expansion chips that made the likes of Kirby's Adventure possible. It's all about those games.
So then you could say the same about the Genesis. Every game I played Genesis it was much more responsive with no lag. I would say the SMS and the NES had nearly the same number of quality titles.
Out of the box the SMS is just a MUCH more powerful system. Problem is, the NES has some tricks up its sleeve via onboard chips in the cartridges. I think there are even NES games with audio chips in the cartridge. The Famicom is pretty impressive given it was released 11 months after the Colecovision. Not even a year. Whereas the Master System wasn't released until November 1985, more than 2 years after the Famicom. Of course, the Master System (Mark III) was hampered by its backward compatibility with the SG1000 (the SMS can play SG1000 games). I call this color stuff "rules" Like EGA is a true 16 color system. Any pixel can be any of the colors without limitation. This is true on the main screen of the Amiga too, I believe. Whereas most of the 8 bit game system have tons of rules about color, which you explain nicely.
I think people forget the time difference. Mid-1983 to late 1985. And then the PC Engine in late 1987, and the Megadrive one year later, was this the time when the tech was moving forward the quickest?
@@Halbared Well, it was moving forward very quickly at a time when even small improvements made a large difference. The falling of RAM prices (via "Moore's Law") and the rapid increase in the number of transistors in a square centimeter both allowed increases in graphics power that was very noticable. A lot of colors needs more RAM and a better faster chip for moving around more colorful sprites. (example, if you want a 4 color sprite, each pixel of the sprite needs 2 bits of RAM (00, 01, 10, 11) where each pair combination represents 1 of the 4 available colors. Whereas if you want 8 colors, you need 3 bits of ram per pixel or for 16 colors you need 4 bits of ram per pixel) The 18 month doubling doesn't really affect modern computers as much as it did early computers.
just leaving this 3rd comment to help you out in the YT algorithm :), your channel is what i fall asleep listening to every night, keep it up ! Cheers from Canada
This video sort of supports a thesis I've had about Nintendo since the Wii days. They are happy to do more with inferior tech. Sometimes they devise workarounds (like the enhancement chips in the NES or ram pack for N64). But the gameboy, wii and now the switch are all examples of successful game systems that don't engage with the race for more polygons, resolution or processing power.
That really only became a thing in the Wii days, prior to that it was definitely a race for power. The budget was mainly what would cap the power. The need for add-ons to provide the extra bits is the evidence for that. Which also made games somewhat pricey. The Gamecube is kinda when they gave up on the power race after it didn't pay off too well. The diminishing returns was just starting to become a thing at the time as well, unfortunately for Sega who had fallen too far behind with the Dreamcast.
Famicom came out in 1983 though, long before Sega mark 3. The Sega console that completed with Famicom in Japan, the SG-1000, was basically a colecovision.
Master System was capable of better graphics, but the NES had a better PCM sound chip (not counting FM or any expansions) and I think the NES had more memorable and standout games overall, especially in Japan and North America.
I love the look of SMS games, and it has a pretty interesting library (with a bit less of the licensed shlock and shovelware on NES). That said, often NES games seem to be snappier with SMS games feeling ‘soft,’ with some notable exceptions. It’s not a controller thing since it’s the case on emulators, and it’s not necessarily a bad thing, just and observation
I noticed Master System background tiles allows transparent features,it is found in Golden Axe and altered beast. This feature allows the Master System to get on pace with their new competitors.
Part of the problem with the Master System is that it took until about 1987 for Sega to get out of the arcade-first mindset and realize that software developers were partners, not competitors, and by that point they were out of time for the Master System because Nintendo had locked up the entire development ecosystem to what later proved to be illegally anticompetitive license deals. It would take until 1990 for the rights issue to be worked out in the courts and by that point, Sega was full-bore on the Mega Drive/Genesis.
Sega didn't really escape that mindset for a long time, though. Pandemonium's interview with the Virtua Racer Saturn team reveals just how eager Sega was to screw over 3rd parties with debugger systems that were hard to come by, and prevented you from accessing the system's full power. How Sega of Japan didn't realize this would blow up in their faces is anyone's guess. Both Nintendo and Sony kept secrets too, but not to the point where most 3rd parties were only tapping into half the power of the hardware.
It's an excellent point that a lot don't know about. The way Sega treated the other houses at the start (and also possible Yakuza connections from what I've read) made the bed for NIntendo to enable them to build an empire publishers. I see so many comments cross about the deals Nintendo had not understanding what created this world.
This is a pretty good point, because I see a lot of comments saying things along the lines of "the NES had better games". While true by a consensus, this is a result of the tools palette that's given to the artist, or in this case, the programming teams. Had the NES only released 2 games ever (let's just say NES Golf and Pinball), SMS would have the advantage because there's not enough variety to justify it being the better system in hindsight. I see this video topic more in the lines of "who bought the better supplies at the art store" while "who painted the better pictures with what they bought" can be treated as results and evidence. Conclusive yet subjective within reason. Sega really didn't have many companies to work with until at least mid-1989 while Nintendo had a 3rd party empire of companies cranking out classics that Sega never had access to in the entire SMS lifespan. Sega still came out with good games, but I think there's value in seeing what other establishments can pull off with your system. Companies like Konami and Capcom have visions that could not only push the SMS games and technical prowess in a better way, but a different way. They never got that chance of course, which is another topic altogether.
*2A03, FDS, MMC5, VRC6, SB5, VRC7, N163 Is NES Sound Chip. MMC5 Is Used On Castlevania 3: Dracula's Curse American & European Version. FDS Sound Chip Is Used On Japan Famicom Disk System. Used On Japan Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels Ending Theme, The Legend Of Zelda (Japan FDS Version) Intro Theme, Ending Theme, Sounds & Other. VRC7 Is Used On Konami's Lagrange Point Game. VRC6 Is Used On Castlevania 3: Dracula's Curse Japan Version*
The CPU's are indeed very close to each other. The one critical difference though is the z80's bus is also twice the speed. Which makes sharing devices across its bus a bit easier to do. There is much more bandwidth. And the 6502's higher IPC means it will interrupt the bus more wanting data. So any chained devices with the 6502 will proportionally hurt its performance more than on the z80. As far as which one is easier to program for..... I don't know that. Different developers have their preferences for one or the other. I do think the 6502 had a bit easier time optimizing for, but don't know for sure.
Growing up in the UK, I didn't know one person at school who had a nes. We all had microcomputers (speccy/commodore/amstrad etc) or the Mighty Master System. Nintendo wasn't a thing here until the SNES and Gameboy.
I never saw an SMS in the wild, or at thrift stores. All I ever saw was an SMS gamepad that turned out to work with my Atari 2600 just fine (though only one fire button). I guess it just wasn't a big seller in the US the way the NES was.
Master System is technically superior, but the NES had the better game library by far (although it's only due to Nintendo's shady and very unfair business practices at the time.) NES also had the better controller by far, with a better D-pad and 2 extra buttons. Lastly, you can pause an NES game by pressing the start button. On Master System the pause button was on the console itself, which means you had to walk over to the console every time you needed to use it. Thank God they remedied all of the controller issues with the Genesis controller.
i honestly knew nothing about the master system (ive played alex kidd and phantasy star 1 and thats it) so this is a really interesting video, very cool!
Love your channel. Great info very entertaining to watch, Just a tiny request, could you put the name of the games you are using? A lot of the time I'm looking at them and I just want to try them out
Check out the Castlevania clone on SMS Master of Darkness. Compare its graphics to Castlevania 3. Such a huge difference in quality, it's hard to believe these two systems were from the same generation
The VDP doesn't have the feature to flip sprites, but the z80 has opcodes that the games used to flip them mathematically. I've coded emulators for both systems and discovered how it does it building them.
The Master System was my first game console, so it has a special place in my heart. That said, the NES is much better. It goes to show that, in the end, it's all about the games. Kudos for the Master System for its impressive graphics, though.
Ok, it is BONKERS to me that you can't flip sprites on the SMS! I did not know that, I thought it would have been a super standard feature for the time
You can flip sprites on the SMS. Its just you have to store them in video memory and the cpu can create a new sprite flipped based on the original. The problem is the process took a lot of time and processing power. It was quicker to have two separate sprites.
NES for its stock sound, performance and wide variety of sound expansion chips, memory mappers, accessories and game library. Master System for its stock graphics and FM sound expansion.
Another comparison could be Gamegear vs Nes since it had that megaman and the only real difference between MS and GG was resolution and how many color pallets it had (but not being used at once.)
Along with the known ones, some European developers pushed out great visuals on the Master System. Check games like Wolfchild, Robocop vs Terminator, Shadow of the Beast, Mortal Kombats, Ottifants,etc. Then we have the superb Brazilian Street Fighter 2 port. NES had great vertical shootmups that pushed its power.
People get very tetchy about retro gear criticism in the comments section. I was once called a "fascist" for claiming the Acorn Electron was under-powered.
That's a tough one I love them both in there own ways but if I had to choose then I would have to say my gut is telling me the NES for its classics like Mario and Zelda the NES does have the better library but I don't dismiss the Master System with it's greats too like sonic and Alex the Kidd and others but the NES is the winner in my book
I think the NES had an overall better design, but to be fair, it did have more hardware revisions behind it. It’s also really hard not to be biased when we talk about the SMS, I just wasn’t exposed to it like I was the NES so while I say the NES is better, I never owned a SMS so how could I really know?
As a developer, I can tell you my opinion is that a Z80 running at the same speed as a 6502, is much better. If you look at the instruction set, the Z80 is so much easier to code for, and the instructions accomplish more per cycle, you can do in one instruction, what might take 5 instructions on the 6502. Yeah, it takes more clock cycles to complete an instruction on the Z80, but at basically double the MHz, that has it running at effectively the same speed, with more powerful instructions.
I've watched some side-by-side footage of ports that exist on both systems, complete with the audio from each system being split left and right. There are several games in which the NES version had background music, while the SMS version just didn't bother. In these cases, when the graphics of the two ports were fairly close, this gave a clear edge to NES. There are even a few cases where the SMS graphics are unbiasedly better, but the whole lack of background music makes it a toss-up as to which port was better. There also a few games that simply had more talented artists working the NES port, occasionally giving the NES the edge despite the graphical limitations. All that said, SMS probably has the edge in 75% of the cases where a game was ported to both systems.
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The NES taller resolution was used for overscan to spawn sprites more often than not. SMS didn't necessarily need this overscan to spawn sprites properly into memory.
Neither of these systems had 60 frames per second. They had 30 frames x 2 (double scan) per second + 1 blank screen. Each of frames were drawn twice in order to expand the size of the scanlines to fit the television screen.
If either actually functioned at 60 FPS then the screen size would be half the size of your television.
@@NinjaNezumi This is not true. The NES, SMSs and pretty much every other classic console and computer put out a progressive scan signal at 60 frames per second. Its half the resolution, but not half the size! It just misses out every other line.
@@Sharopolis I just went back and watched several videos showing how the scans work. They don't miss every other line in how you are suggesting, where it results in 60fps of graphical animation. I wanted to be sure before I responded. I'm also a streamer and have had my own frustrations in dealing with the framerates not being correctly displayed on stream.
How the graphics worked is they hit all Odd lines first, then Even lines second. For the Graphics Draw function it's literally only 29.97 herz with a .03 blank cycle.
Animation Frame 1:
Pass 1 of 59.94: Lines 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17, 19, 21, etc...
Pass 2 of 59.94: Lines 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14
Animation Frame 2:
Pass 3 of 59.94: Lines 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17, 19, 21, etc...
Pass 4 of 59.94: Lines 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14
59.94 herz / 2 = 29.97 + 1 blank frame cycle that lasts 0.06 (when the tubes are resetting).
It's functionally 30 fps (29.97 + 0.03), because 1 frame is taking 2 passes to appear on the T.V. IF you killed the second pass, the draw cycles will be twice as fast, even though the TIMING system may be a continuous 59.94 hrz cycle (+0.06).
The Atari's blank page cycle is notorious and if a game isn't programmed right you could send inputs into the system while the draw function isn't operating for the sprites. I've argued that Rogers (King of games) was abusing early Atari carts for his impossible scores because you can achieve those scores if you factor in the blank screen glitch.
This is the reason why you can't accurately record a classic system at a regular rate of 60fps. The only way to get an accurate display of a classic system game on a streaming platform is if you set your framerate cycle to either 29.97 (+.03 blank) or 59.94 (+.06 blank). Otherwise the flicker will not be picked up by the program properly. If you take a recording of a classic system doing a 29.97 (+.03 blank) you won't drop a single frame of animation, that's because the graphics are functioning at what you would call 30fps due to the double line processing.
Now you might argue "That's 60fps because the processor never stops working".
But that's wrong. Because FPS refers to graphical framerate of advancement. Not how many times the CRT cycles in 1 second.
If the T.V. is drawing the same sprite TWICE over, then that sprite is only shown 30 positions in a period of 1 second. IF the sprite is only drawn once per cycle, then that sprite is shown with 60 different positions in a period of 1 second.
Since the tubes are making two passes then the sprite is being drawn twice in the same position, giving an effective framerate for the entire image of 30.
I have several games, such as Darkwing Duck, which really suck rocks when you try to record/stream them at 60 fps instead of 59.94 (+0.6) because the i-frame flicker caused by the timing can literally make your character invisible thanks to the refresh rate not being a true 60fps.
But, again, if you stream at 29.97 (+0.03 NTSC standard) you won't miss a single frame of animation.
There ARE SOME systems that have a TRUE framerate of 59.94 (+0.6) (single pass), but NES and SMS are not one of them.
I will say, the SMS not being able to flip sprites even though it could flip tiles comes as kind of a shock. It just seems like it should be obvious how useful that is.
It just means that to make the same game, the SMS version requires some extra ROM space to do the Reversed sprites.
@@TheDeelunatic Well sure, but memory was more expensive at the time. It just feels like it would have paid off in the long run to have it.
@@MystMagus hence the reason why the sms didn't get many ports from the NES
I know pretty well how MS/GG works and don't know much about the NES. What I can tell for sure though is that if you have a sprite composed of 2x4 tiles (for example Mario or Sonic), flipping each tile individually certainly won't result in creating the mirror image you are expecting. So if NES can indeed flip sprites, it means that is somehow knows "composite" sprites, that are composed of several tiles, and it flips them as well as reorganizing them. For this reason, I can understand while it was not implemented for MS, and the ability of flipping tiles for backgrounds sounds more useful as it saves a ton of memory.
I am a bit surprised that MS developers would have to use double the ROM size to store sprites in both direction, while they could flip them at the moment of loading the tile in VRAM, unless it is too slow of course.
I feel like this could be solved with interrupts. I’m not certain how efficient it would be, but they’ve done some AMAZING things with interrupts on that system.
For example, they used Horizontal Interrupts to make a Doom-Esque engine work on the system. There was a Disney game that also used them to create some very impressive illusions of depth.
In early ‘92 I swapped my Master System 2 for an NES so I could rent Mario 3 from the video store. I didn’t notice the system differences at the time, it was all about the games.
Yep even when the N64 and PS1 popped up. Specific games for me Mario64 and grand tourismo. Never got any of them 🤣
Stupid argument about "its about the games"... it's extremely stupid and ignorant.
The Japanese FamiCom sold 10 million systems in Japan alone from 1983 to 1986 because Nintendo launched with Mario Bros which was a nearly 1:1 conversion from the arcade... essentially Nintendo was initially offering the "arcade at home" strategy to Japanese families and by "families" that includes the entire family, males, females, young and older people who would give videogames a try unlike how eventually Nintendo of America would just only do marketing specifically towards "young boys" which seems vague until you notice that they were aiming at younger than 10 years old ages and then somehow it became that 4 year olds to 10 year olds were their target demographic... which was why the vast majority of NES videogames being hyped ended up being very childish games that toddlers could play even when an 8 year old who got a NES in 1985 was no longer 8 years old by 1989.
So you claiming it was all about the games only proves sheer idiocy.
Nintendo had early solid launch games in Japan which earned them 10 million systems sold which earned them loyal third party alliances which earned them certain game devs who fully utilized the capability of the FamiCom NES and eventually these devs utilized the add on chips to further enhance the capabilities BEYOND what the NES could do because it was less of a risk given that there were more than 12 million ACTIVE FamiCom owners/buyers in Japan alone... which is why many games were able to earn huge sales and big sequels.
Meanwhile Sega's SG-1000 was not as strong specs as the NES despite both launching the same day in 1983... arguably Nintendo had better arcade games and better arcade clout than Sega up to 1983... thus the SG-1000 found itself not looking as capable as the Japanese FamiCom... which was the prime reason why Sega headquarters Japan had to re-engineer the SG-1000 into the Mark III aka Sega Master System and launch in 1985 Japan...
Being that there were other language barriers and distance limitations as well as budgets, Sega felt it wad logical to launch the Mark III in the U.S.A. first which only happened when the MK III was redesigned and launched in 1986, a year later than Japan only for the SMS to be seen as a system that didn't "have enough games"... because it was NEW... which is why your argument fails.
The SMS was not even OFFICIALLY launched in the U.K./Europe, Australia and Brazil... actually it wad hardly available in Canada and Mexico which is North American region due to dumb, inept, incompetent management staff at 80s Sega of America who didn't know how to distribute the SMS and do the proper marketing work and why management fell to Tonka Toys and why the WEAKER Atari 7800 due to having clout and lower price ended up outselling the SMS in North America...
Meanwhile Nintendo of America was busy expanding distribution of the NES into Canada and Mexico... eventually having official Nintendo Power Magazine and Nintendo Club magazine in Mexico while Sega's newsletters were mail only even by 1990.
Actually let's use the games argument... by 1988 Sega MegaDrive launch, that means you won't buy the MegaDrive because "there's only three games" and Nintendo has more...
@@apollosungod2819 except it was about the games to many. Just because you are going into specs doesn't mean others were. Majority of people bought a system for the game selection.
@@apollosungod2819 Shhhh
@@apollosungod2819 The Master System as a huge success in Europe, especially France and the UK it was the highest selling console until 1996 with the Megadrive second, then SNES. The NES release was a disaster in Europe. It was late and obsolete. Europe still had Master System games until 1996 like Streets of Rage 2, Sonic 2, Sonic Chaos etc
I love the subtle brute honesty you have in these videos, commenting "if the video is longer I'll make more money", "this was a waste of time but that's youtube isn't it?". UA-camrs always hide and pretend it's not that way, but come ooon you can see right through them. I think tou once said "I don't think I'm anybody's favorite youtuber", that was pretty sad 'cause I like your videos a lot! You have the right balance between technical details and keeping things easy to understand, you put your personality in but don't lose focus trying to be under the spotlight, you don't obsess on details and keep a good constant pace, you're realistic but laid back, and on top, the info is really good. I knew Master System was more powerful but I still wanted to hear your take on it, and now I know it can flip backgrounds but not sprites, double sprite sizes, has an easier time chopping the screen!
I did not know the master system couldnt flip its sprites. This is why they took 'advantage' of this to show different sprites facing left and right in some games. Also worth mentioning the master system came a few years after the nes so it is expected its hardware to be a bit more powerful, just like when the snes came a few years after the genesis.
Snes superior ao genises
@@miriamalmeida6687 a propria nintendo aposta muito mais na qualidade de seus softwares do que de seus hardwares. Entao acredito que ela tenha feito o snes com essa mentalidade tambem.
Pelo que observo com relação a essas discussoes é que o genesis tem uma resolução um pouco maior, um processador notoriamente mais rápidomas com o snes sendo superior em todos os outros aspectos.
Ouvi falar tambem que é mais facil desenvolver pro genesis do que pro snes, tanto que temos hoje muito mais jogos novos pro console da sega. Adoraria ver a cena indie investir mais em jogos de snes tb.
except the Genesis/MD is probably more powerful than the SNES
@@protocetidyeah. the SNES’s design is bottlenecked by last-minute hardware design flaws. had Nintendo stuck to their original plans the SNES would have been far more powerful than it is today
@@crimson-foxtwitch2581
Oh yeah. They wanted a 10MHz+ Motorola 68K in the Snes. That would have been huge.
The Master System was a very good and well thought out hardware. I am myself developing a game on Game Gear, a console that amazes me. No wonder the Game Gear, which is basically a portable MS, could hand its own and compare pretty favorably with many ports from the 16 bits consoles, as well as exclusives (it has a lot that people don't know about). By simply expanding the color palette from 64 to 4096, and reducing the resolution, the original MS really shone again.
I love the gamegear. How far are you with your game? Is it playable now?
It was aside form the audio. Had the original system had FM sound I think it would have went much further than it did. Honestly what killed them was not having Mario. Even Hudson had Bonk and a game that was just like zelda but looked 20x better thanks to the PCE/TG16 512 colors, and still it failed because those two reasons.
Definitely feel like the whole story wasn't being told when it came to the differences in audio (ignoring Japanese-exclusive scenarios). Sure, it was established that the NES audio was better. But it really needed to be underscored that the main issue with the SMS's sound was that it was flatly incapable of providing bass. I think the lowest frequency those square waves could reach was something like 100Hz? *Multiple* octaves were left on the table. And what makes this worse is that really good bass is precisely what the NES's triangle channel is excellent at providing. It's simply not enough to say the NES's audio was more capable-the SMS's sound was basically hamstrung by unnecessary limitations.
IMHO they are basically equally matched in the audio dept. Both are very decidedly 8 bit in their sound., Or, more accurately, even though the NES is technically "better," the Mark III is "good enough" for an 8 bit system. Even the supposedly superior to both of them SID chip is still an 8 bit sound chip and only rarely really comes out ahead (though a coupe of Hubbard's tunes do really show off the SID)
good point
@@tarstarkusz The amusing thing about the SID observation is that you can program a SID to accurately reproduce any of the NES's voices, including the bassy triangle (see: Super Mario Bros. ported to C64). Games, of course, opted to use the more specialized functions of the chip, rather than static waveforms, and so most of the sounds you got out of the thing had that tinny, midrange flavor that is singularly SID.
@@Asterra2 What specialized functions exactly? Whatever waveforms you got out of the chip you created yourself.
I think the SID chip was the best during that era with Master Systems being the distant, distant third... even with the FM chip it's still in third place, just not that distant.
@@JoypadDivison Among the three chips being discussed, the SID was the only one which provided controls for dynamic waveforms-both the 2A03 and the SN76489 relied upon static waveforms, with the latter limited specifically to squares. My observation underscores the point that game developers taking advantage of the SID's dynamic capabilities tended to forego any thought of lower frequencies by consequence (talking the 20 to 60 Hz range). Not always, but very typically. Whenever low frequencies were used, the bass quality of them was diminished by the timbre provided by the dynamic modifications.
Sega's 8-bit console dominated the NES in terms of color palette. but it was the opposite during the 16 bit era. I was a "system wars" nerd as a kid, and I remember going around quoting the 32,768 figure from the SNES to assert my console's dominance.
Yeah, I think Nintendo learned from Sega. But in that time, NES lost it's iron grip on devs and so the Genesis could compete, something the SMS couldn't really do.
Personally I think that if you could somehow have given the Mark III (with it's FM sound capability) the developer support the NES and Famicom had, and if you could have taken the silly Master System controller away and given it something much better, then the Master System would have been the dream console in the 8-Bit days.
And also allow different parts of the background to have a different vertical position instead of just a different horizontal position.
I think if it were just more popular it could have beaten the nes
sms needed mapper chips like nes
True, but what if''s . . .
The FM sound is overrated if you ask me, I've compared the FM tracks in Phantasy Star and a few other games to the ones that we got and it doesn't really seem like an improvement...it just needed gamepads with the pause/start button on them and it would've done fine, also a peripheral like the Power Base Converter but to play Game Gear games on it would've been nice too.
I feel like another part of the story is that the number of developers on the platform had a real impact on Graphic and sound quality as well. Sketchy licensing practices meant that Nintendo had access to a much broader array of developers to push this system to its maximum. A comparatively large number of in-house games had to be made at Sega… which had pros and cons… it definitely made things more homogenous at Sega but limited the innovation that diversity can give.At the end of the day, The person using the technology and the techniques they use are more influential than the raw power of the medium they are using. Leonardo da Vinci using an eight color palette would likely school me even if I had access to 1000 colors.
Agreed. Nintendo had major studios psuedo locked down from competing against them and many dare not damage that relationship to develop for an unproven SMS. IIRC these agreements were largely gone by 90 and 91 when the Genesis started getting some serious 3rd party support and took a huge(and for a time majority) part of the US video game market from Nintendo.
I imagine had the SMS been able to release a good number of the NES 3rd party hits, the SMS may not have overtaken the NES, but it would have been fairly close in the US. Yes you would miss out on Nintendo developed games, but with the increased revenue, Sega could have produced more 1st party bangers to compliment the increased 3rd party bangers.
Fun fact: The Sega Genesis/Mega Drive is almost fully backwards-compatible with the SMS, and it achieves this by incorporating an entire SMS into its design. There's a discrete Z80 CPU on the motherboard and an SN76489 PSG integrated into the video display processor's chip. The VDP itself is fully backwards-compatible with the one in the original SMS, as they're both evolutions of Texas Instruments TMS9918 display chip.
When it's playing SMS games, the 68000 CPU and the YM2612 FM synth chip are idle. When it's playing Genesis games, the Z80 is used as an audio co-processor, and both the FM synth and PSG sound chips are used in games.
@@jasonlee7816 The Genesis/Megadrive actually used the same combo as many of the arcade machines of the day. Sega's own System 16/System 18 and Hang On/Outrun Superscalars , Capcom's CPS 1/CPS 2 and even SNKs NEO GEO had a 68000 as its main cpu and Z-80 helping out with some audio duty. There were some difference in memory available, speed/number of the processors and even custom chips, but the base was the similar.
The Genesis hosted various ports from these arcade boards that were pretty faithful to the originals:
Altered Beast, Golden Axe, Wonder Boy: Monster Lair, Super Hang On, Outrun, Forgotten Worlds, Ghouls N Ghosts, Street Fighter 2 Championship Edition, Strider, Mercs, Fatal Fury, Fatal Fury 2, Samurai Shodown, Art of Fighting, World Heroes...
@@jasonlee7816 yeah, happens with all of the consoles though, the programmers get better at extracting performance out of them as time goes on. There's a dev out there who has made an F zero demo on stock Genesis hardware, looks really close to the SNES game.
Ironically, the SN76489's audio is better utilized when it's not the main sound chip. The YM2612 does the heavy lifting while the SN76489
is essentially the vocal lead.
@@jasonlee7816 Are you caught up on same and similar?
Is it EXACTLY the SAME 68000 with the same speed across the board? No.
Is it EXACTLY the SAME Z80 with the same clock speed? No.
It is however the SAME base combo; a Motorola 68000 main CPU paired with a Zilog Z80. It means that a lot of the base coding done for the arcade version can transfer over to the Genesis port. Sega based the Genesis/Megadrive on their system 16 arcade board (Shinobi, Altered Beast).
Beyond the base, the arcade boards had custom chips and hardware for larger color palettes, higher resolutions, better sound, more sprites, hardware scaling and rotation, more memory...etc.
Given the shortcomings of the Genesis compared to the different arcade boards, the quality of the port will vary.
A lot of the Genesis ports were very faithful to the arcade;
-in most cases there was a lack of color, and a difference in sound,
-in some cases levels were altered or missing because of memory constraints,
-in many cases games were scaled back because the console lacked the hardware to duplicate the effects
-in all cases the ability of the programmer affects how faithful a port is
@@lazarushernandez5827were most of the arcade games ported on the Sega Genesis/Mega-Drive faithful as in 70%, 80%, 90%?
Hardware wise, SMS is clearly superior. To be fair, the master system was sega's second attempt to go up against the NES. think of it as the 8 bit dreamcast.
Except in the audio department. What the stock NES brings to that fight is much better.
@@SomeOrangeCat NES had a weak audio chip hence the games sound awful, crap, dreadful, garbage, horrible, terrible
@@jasonlee7816 Lol. Right.
@@jasonlee7816 Weak, sure but the Master system's was weaker.
@@jasonlee7816 TrumpWrong.gif
Even with no NES expansion chips to confuse things, (as mentioned in the video) the SMS' eating into its own VRAM is its biggest graphical limitation. A 2-player game, and one player is pointing to the left? Need 2 sets of tiles, one for each player.
A game like Ironman Stewart's Off-Road, with its info screens showing 4 players of different colours, 4 different coloured fonts, etc. can be done with a single set of tiles on the NES; If it had been 4 players on the SMS, it would need all the graphics, font, etc. doubled (or quadrupled if not using both palettes) in VRAM to get the different colours for each. That's just one example that immediately springs to mind.
Though without expansion chips the most advanced game possible is honestly the original Mario brothers. Every other game after it had to use memory mappers. :/
@@Roninkinx And every other game after Ghost House on the SMS had to use memory mappers too. Or are we forgetting that the SMS likewise needed mappers to make anything above and beyond the MyCard games?
@@Roninkinx that will be "Super Mario Bros." Not the original "Mario Brothers".
Could you not flip tiles using programming techniques after all that's what some software houses did on the old home computers like the spectrum, Amstrad and others not including the Commodore 64 as that had sprite flipping built in if I remember right.
@@-Steven- Flipping tiles is not the problem. It's slightly computationally expensive, so that could be a problem in fast-paced games; however, VRAM storage for left-facing and right-facing sprites if needed simultaneously is the problem.
A few interesting points that were not mentioned. SMS background tiles can choose between the 1st and 2nd palette, which allows 32 colors on screen. Also, the bulky border around the screen selects a color from the sprite palette, which can be color 0. Background tile attributes additionally allowed some impressive sprite masking.
The SMS's 256x224 and 256x240 modes were rarely used, because the first iterations of the SMS don't support them. This incompatibility even returned on the Power Base Converter for the MD/Genesis.
The NES has 256x240 pixel nametables, but NTSC systems crop the image to 256x224.
Both consoles had similar background scrolling capabilities, and both had the limitation of not being able to overwrite vertical scrolling mid-frame. On the NES this could be circumvented with some H-blank trickery, while on the SMS it's still deemed impossible.
The FM unit for the Sega Mark III had the limitation of only being active, if the regular PSG sound was deactivated. The rather special japanese SMS could play both simultaneously, but then again would create incompatibilities to the Mark III. This commonly caused modded games to have no sound effects if they used FM music.
It's unfortunate in my opinion how the 2 systems are not compared more commonly as competitors and the NES sees alot more attention among retro fans.
Just one extra annotation: SMS has a special flag to lock scroll the first two upper line of tiles or the last six rows of tiles vertically. Very handy for shutemups hud elements.
For me it was maybe the whole experience (marketing,packaging,user experience,controllers) that attracted me to Nintendo. Things turned around a bit when the Sega Genesis arrived and their marketing and design got much better.
Then it went away again :(
As an American I don't even remember the master system. I love these videos. I feel like I'm learning about tech I missed out on, yet it was a part of my generation
Here in Brazil, the Sega representive Tec Toy still releasing vesions of Master System and Mega Drive (Genesis in the US).
I had a famous famiclone, but the little I played in MS (I played in the rental hour game) was good.
Agreed. It was like a myth at school. Everyone knew the Genesis but the SMS was like a tall tale you read about once.
I was the only kid in my town that I know of growing up that had SMS but one thing I do remember is while everyone was playing Double Dragon on the NES I finally got mine in the mail for the SMS I couldn't believe how much better it was on the SMS. I don't even recall the NES version being 2 player.
And if your adaptor for Game Gear has the controller port, you can play Double Dragon with 2 players on the Game Gear.
Thank you for mentioning the more robust instruction set of the MOS 6502 vs the Zilog Z80. People see an 8bit CPU and assume clock speed is all that's important! Drives me nuts.
And yet, the Z80 is more flexible than the MOS 6502. Clock is nothing without knowledge on how to use It, right?
@@cleidsonaraujopeixoto163 That's a good point. :)
Thanks.
People see 16 bit consoles and assume the same thing sadly. The SNES was slower in clock speed but the efficiency of the chip let it do slightly faster computations. Biggest problem(or strength) was that most graphic effects were effectively commands, while you had to program everything out for the genesis which lead to more robust effects if the programmer was talented….But Sega took that idea and cranked it upto 11 for the Saturn soooo
@@Roninkinx Has there been anyone since SEGA that tried to make polygon faces out of sprites?
Another thing to consider about the SMS sound is that it had a lower note range, so the music ends up sounding high pitched. It's a shame since the other aesthetics of the console are so good
Yep, and even with the FM expansion board, the YM2413 can't change instruments, so even if technically more advanced, it just doesn't sound that nice. SMS has a special nostalgic sound, but the NES is just more capable of producing diverse sound.
@@BasementBrothers while there is some very good stuff for the FM expansion (the Sonic FM mod is amazing), it just doesn't give me the "8 bit vibe" like PSG sound. I remembered there is also the noise mode that allows the chip to make bass sounds, but it takes away one channel and it wasn't very used.
Not sure if you mention this in part 2 or not (haven't watched it yet), but a major advantage of the NES for me personally was the controller. For one thing, I think most people would agree that the D-pad on the NES is noticeably better. It's just easier to tell what direction you're pressing with a cross, as opposed to a concave rounded-cornered square. Also, the NES had a Start and Select button on the controller itself. I mean, just having the convenience of being able to pause a game without having to walk over to the console was a huge deal. The Start and Select buttons were admittedly on the squishy side and in a somewhat awkward location, making them a poor choice for any action that needed to be activated continuously, but they worked well in a pinch for moves activated somewhat sparingly, like the uppercut in Punch-Out!!, or toggling your active weapon in games like Batman. Actually, if Streets of Rage for SMS had used an NES controller, the controls from the Genesis version could have been left basically intact. Select could have been used to activate the special attack.
Another hardware related consideration not directly related to processing power is the cartridge slots of each system. When comparing the original NES cartridge cartridge slot to the SMS's, the SMS is the clear winner because it doesn't have the stupid spring loaded pins that eventually fail to make proper contact with the cartridge. Even back in the 80's this caused issues with games not booting properly, causing gamers to resort to the whole "pull the game out and blow in it" tactic. Meanwhile, I can't ever remember having done that with any other console my family owned, because most games booted fine the first time. The redesigned NES with the dog bone controllers removed this issue, but it came out so much later that I don't think it counts. To this day, the NES I grew up with still won't boot games most of the time because of that cartridge slot mechanism. To quote a famous nerd, what were they thinking?!
As a kid, my only exposure to the SMS was through my grandfather, who was a big gamer back in the day, and I remember being very impressed by the graphical fidelity of many of the games. I was absolutely blown away by the port of Double Dragon for the SMS, especially compared to the NES, not only due to the improved visuals but the inclusion of simultaneous coop, as the NES version should have had. Having said that, I felt like the SMS library was generally underwhelming. There were fantastic games to be found on it, for sure, but the NES just seemed to have more of what I wanted. Plus, the NES didn't have ALF. My word, ALF was atrocious.
Alf was the only USA exclusive SMS game, lol.
As a Homebrewer, the SMS is better solely on having more memory :)
In fact, I'm struggling to reduce my memory usage (currently at ~5KB) to fit on the NES
As a programmer myself, more memory is always welcome if You know what You are doing.
By the way, this port seems quite interesting, Daniel.
vary many games on the NES used extra memory in the cartridge. The system supported upto 40kb ram total. And tile memory could be extended upto 10kb i believe.
@@cleidsonaraujopeixoto163 thank you, but I actually gave up on the NES just yesterday. Producing an enhanced port for the MD seems like a better use of my time (since the game won't run on a MD, as I'm using a legacy mode from the SG-1000).
Sure, I could require an enhanced chip, but just like JM Coulon said, what's the fun in it?
Update: managed to reduce memory usage to a couple hundred bytes, but the ROM size is still a problem. NES still out of question :(
@@DanielMonteiroNit Você podia postar esse trampo no UA-cam! Aqui no Brasil o SMS era MUITO popular como vc deve saber, não sei ai em Portugal, mas se fizer uma serie mostrando isso ia ser dahora!
I like the way you compared the systems using just stock specs in this video and no enhancement chips, but in the overall assessment, I feel it's fair game to use the enhancement chips. Looking forward to the followup video.
You sure are treating us to a lot of new videos recently! If you want some more video ideas, I'd love to see comparisons like this between other systems as well (I'd especially like to see handhelds - Game Boy/Color vs. Game Gear perhaps? Atari Lynx?)
There's something refreshing and unique about the way you cover retro systems & hardware. Most other channels would focus more on the nostalgia factor and prominent software releases, but you approach the subject with a much more objective and technical analysis. Definitely a niche that I'm happy to see filled, as someone looking to get into game development! Really helps put into perspective the kinds of limitations that these old games were working with.
You said it. I'm looking forward to a Genesis vs. SNES comparison where someone actually mentions the SNES can only access two sprite tile sizes at a time, and has serious vblank related issues. Or mentions the Genesis's bizarre low resolution mode, which somehow has less sprites than the high resolution mode.
And if he tackles handhelds? That'd be a dream come true.
Look at Wonderboy 3: The Dragon's Trap though. Some sprites are actually different when facing left or right. Shion is right handed whichever way he's facing.
Great video, as always. I very much look forward to part 2.
That said, I always wonder what could have been if the Master System had the developer support back then and the homebrew community activity right now that the NES enjoyed.
I’ve seen some SMS homebrew and it’s super impressive. Looks 16 bit quality
The scrolling seam wasn't a problem until LCD panels and emulation. The seam was hidden in the overscan behind the CRTs cabinet frame. So it wasn't really a problem of the era, but it is visible more today with modern displays.
Scrolling was a real problem back then if you had a machine like MSX,SG1000,Atari ST,Spectrum or Amstrad CPC and the old PCs that didnt have hardware sprites on their video system.
NES,Master System,C64 and even Atari 2600 had hardware sprites hence they had no problem with their scrolling.
@@vasileios6301 yes, but my comment was in direct response to the statement in the video that you would see artifacts on the edge of the screen. That was not the case on the CRT TVs of the era. As such, any artifacts that are outside the title safe area of the screen shouldn't be considered.
That's not really true--you can definitely see it on a CRT, although it would depend on the TV you used. From what I gather European/PAL TVs generally had less overscan so it might have been more noticeable here.
@@todesziege can you see it, or was it intentional are two different things. You can absolutely see it on a modern display, you might have been able to set it if an older CRT drew the overscan region onto the screen, but it wasn't intended that that region should be visible.
@@R.B. True, it was intended to not be displayed. Like I said I think it showing might be more common on European TVs.
The Master System was very similar to the MSX computer. SEGA was competing against the Famicom so they launched something that allowed easy porting of MSX games, so the console could quickly gain a lot of good games. They did the same thing with the Genesis, which was 68K like their arcade boards (System 16/18), as well as some other arcade systems, and of course the X68000.
I feel like they really play off of each other’s weaknesses, in all except controls. The NES ultimately wins out because the pad, despite the corners on it, was ridiculously more responsive, and didn’t require touching the console at all to do something as necessary as…pause it.
Who thought pause on the console was a good idea ffs.
@@Roninkinx i think the SMS as well as the original Famicom, was designed for japanese kids gaming habits. With the tv placed directly on the kid's room floor and sitting next to the console it was very easy for a jspanese kid to stretch a little to push the pause button.
It's definitely bad, but at least the cable length tended to be decent so pulling up your SMS beside you wasn't horrible. Taking your hands off the controller to pause was still pretty lame.
And it is very easy to add pause to the control pad.
hooray someone with some sense
Great video!
One thing I'd criticise is (and I might be in the minority):
If you could add the game title and platform to the examples. Some games looked like they're fun, but I'll probably never find them again
Something people usually overlook is the fact the NES controller has 2 more input buttons (Start and Select) and that added so much like in-game menus or pausing. The SMS, if not mistaken (please correct me if I'm wrong) doesn't even have a software pausing system, hence the Pause button being in the console, not in the controller, to actual freeze all the processing like a hardware halt.
@@GladeSwope oh nice, I didn’t remember that
@@GladeSwope Wonder Boy III does the same.
@@GladeSwope It was common on several other Japanese consoles at the time; Japanese homes are comparatively smaller than American ones, so it was assumed you'd be sitting close to the TV with the console within reach. It's also reflected in the shorter controller cables.
Be prepared for the vinesauce 🙂
Time to sing the raid song.
This was a fun comparison. I really think the details beneath the main specs are so important. I know with Mega Drive vs. SNES, the details make the MD compete better than it seems on the surface, and makes it more impressive to me. Here, I don't think those details(like the tile flipping) quite close the technical gap between the 8-bit machines, but it is fascinating to see those differences and how even the NES had some tricks up its sleeve. You could even argue that the NES was better suited to the small ROM sizes of the time. I had a Master System growing up before getting the NES late, but I stayed a Sega guy. I've also come to appreciate SMS PSG music again lately, but it's definitely a weaker point and the NES wins there. Limited as it was, there are some good tunes. The SMS limited tile flipping reminds of of the PCE having a similar, if not the same, limitation. I'd bet it was just a compromise they had to make with what they had available at the time. I'd bet they sacrificed the flipping for the colors. Surely, they'd want to have both, but all those sprite-based consoles were about compromises.
True; especially a lot of early Master System games felt quite lacking in content, with arcade ports often missing a lot of stuff. Those extra tile colors basically meant double the file size.
I remember the varieties of colors and visual texturing created therewith on the SMS was a whole world beyond what the NES could do, but that games often just felt better and tighter to play on the NES even though they were rarely pretty.
For some reason, control on the SMS felt looser, jankier and just less well designed than it ever did for comparable styles of games on the NES. Maybe it was just me? I dunno, but it still feels that way even on emulators to me, so I suspect basic game engineering differences.
Had both consoles as a kid, always felt the NES was hamstrung by it's composite out, the RGB from the master system simply looked better.
From what I've noticed a lot of the games in the Sega Master system graphics wise look superior to the NES you've got some of the late Master system releases that almost look as good as a 16-bit release
Mighty Final Fight is an example of a late release NES game that looks fantastic. Far superior to early released titles.
@@freddyvidz it almost seems like even though double dragon for the NES is two player and mighty final fight as I remember is only one player it's probably the better of the two
The Master System used 4-bit (16 color) tiles, which is the same as most 16-bit systems use, so its not a coincidence.
Mighty Final Fight looks great for what it is, but by no means would anybody confuse it for a 16-bit game.
@@animemaster4861 Double Dragon is only a 1 player game. The second game was 2 players, simultaneous.
@@freddyvidz There's the NES arcade version which iirc did have 2 player. Very odd, seeing as the home cart didn't.
*Edit - Playchoice 10. sorry, couldn't remember the name,
I, for one, appreciate that all the game play on show is dreadful.
Lmaoo
I capture all the footage myself... wait a minute do I recognise that user name? I think I do.
@@Sharopolis You know where to find me :)
Having coded both 6502 and Z80 in assembly for years, both have advantages and both have disadvantages but I'd always throw my hat toward the Z-80. Love the 6502 for it's RISC like speed but the Z80 has by far a more robust instruction set, many more registers and most important, the I/O mapping gives a very nice edge to the Z-80. All the peripherals are left out of the memory map. I always like the SMS in the color department because having both systems, the NES colors always looked washed out.
Interresting point of view. Why then Z-80 was barely mentioned in breakthrough 8 bit era games everywhere? We have games on 6502 looking like 16 bit even on this channel and very few Z-80 based and barely matching. Is it because good CPU was commonly paired with weak PPU or used in less popular devices?
@@danielhawkings7680 So which fallacy is this? Argument from authority or argument from popularity? Listing some games you claim look 16 bit might have been a better argument but I got a say...sounds like a fan boy speaking. (sarcasm on)After all Windows is the best OS because it's the most popular right( sarcasm off?)
@@danielhawkings7680 The Z80 is everywhere. It's one of the most used cpu's ever. It's extremely common in arcade hardware throughout the 80's .If you look at games that used it in the late 80's they look "16 bit". The reason there are so many limit pushing games for NES and C64 is because of the long life span of those systems. Games were being published for them well into the 16 bit era and developers had to find ways to make them look relevant. The CPU isn't the determining factor in any of this.
Very interesting! Any advice for someone wanting to get into dabbling in this? I don’t know low level languages sadly high level is where I’ve messed around..
finally a complete and competent comparison video about two big classic monsters, well done!
I've always considered the two systems comparable, with nes beeing more stylish and cool having ton of personality, and sms more similar to a missed 16 bit system.
infact thanx to more versatile colour handling sms had conversions expecially for euro market very similar to 16 bits counterparts, let's say speedball 2, robocod, zool, lemmings, or kick off, they looks very similar to atari st or amiga.
in sound territories undoubtly nes wins, the sample channel makes difference even into sfx stuff e.g. doors opening in castlevania...and even in music, not only for sampled tribal percussive stuff, e.g. topgun second mission soundtrack has gorgeous sampled orchestra hits and slap bass, playing musical notes.
sms can play samples but leaves to cpu no cycles to do anything useful, some old cga dos games with sampled fx from pc speaker had same behaviour of cpu.
The Master System certainly has brighter colors, sometimes even too much (I'm thinking about the red screen which appears in Black Belt between stages). I love both systems though.
I'd like to see someone recreate the first level of the Mario 1-3 games on the NES to play on the Master System. Try to get it to look and feel as close as possible to the NES version. Just to see what that would look and play like.
It would be difficult to get the exact mechanics like the slowdown from running and that unique nes precision I’ve seen superboy series which are clones that can’t get th
The differances in many ways is like amstrad vs spectrum where amstrad's colours where a big factor.
I never played nor owned a SMS in my entire life thus-far, and yet I know for a fact that the only design-choice I hate about it is that the Start Button is part of the Console itself rather than the Controllers!
The biggest point is the type of games that were coming up on these systems. Many of the games that were cross platform at the time were significantly different in their gameplay due to how the systems differed and where they were popularly sold. For example, Afterburner for example is going to look better on the master system than on the NES because of the color and and resolution when compared to the arcade counterpart of the game. Same game, different experience.
Can't wait for part 2! Also, perhaps mention how the NES had Select and Start buttons.
For those interested, I made an in-depth video comparing games for the two systems:
ua-cam.com/video/f4PptW-4cdw/v-deo.html
The SMS had the pause button.
@@TheDneavesBut the NES had the power button and the reset button, plus the thing you push to lower the cartridge down, and also the lid that you push open and closed. Plus 2 controllers with 4 buttons each, for a total of 12 things to push not counting the D pad. Master System had power, pause, and reset, plus 2 controllers with 2 buttons each, for a total of 7.
6:09 Those animated story sequences in Ninja Gaiden were impressive on the NES.
Can I just say Kirby's Adventure looks a lot better than a lot of Master System games, especially with the rotation effect in Butter Building?
That game was 6 megs
The NES gave us eight 4-color palettes; four for background tiles and four for sprites. The SNES gave us 16 16-color palettes; eight for background tiles and eight for sprites. Sega Master System gave us two 16-color palettes. Sega Genesis had 4 16-color palettes; 2 for background tiles and 2 for sprites.
The difference here is Nintendo (wisely IMO) focused on sound and music as well as efficiency, while Sega focused on graphics. The end result?
Well it speaks for itself. Super Mario Bros. Overworld theme is known by like 80% of the planet. Sega didn't get anything as iconic until the Genesis. And even then, they always lagged behind in popularity. I would argue that Nintendo knew what it was doing in this regard. Graphics are second to sound design. This is a lesson any game developer should take note of.
Perhaps only in the USA, because here in Europe, nobody really cared about the NES or even Nintendo. The SMS was king and for that same reason its sountracks are quite well known over here. I'm 44 years old now and never had a friend, cousine or neighbour who had a NES.
For my part the best thing about the Master system except the lower picture height is the built in support for RGB, Even the SMS2 is RGB capable with some simple modding giving it the absolute quality on a CRT. What I like on the NES is it´s good audio and full screen picture that is still pretty good, and the Master system for it´s built in picture quality capability and you can enhance the quality of the audio as well if you tap into the primary audio chip as well. for me the NES is the winner in terms of audio and gameplay but the Sega absolutely destroys in built in picture quality (RGB)
Some european NES units had RGB output
@@t0biascze644 I think you mix this with the yellow Composite output the NES came with which is not RGB. I live in Europe and have never seen any unmodified NES console have RGB. The difference between composite and RGB is huge when it comes to picture quality and you need 4 signals for this to work. Composite sync with chrominance and luminance signal and the 3 color outputs Red Green and Blue.
Thing is that the NES is not even capable of making this signal without a modchip with a chip that takes this raw signal directly from the NES PPU chip and converts it to RGB.
The master system have all signals directly on the chip but the MS2 console does not have the external components built on to the mainboard other than the shitty RF modulator so to get RGB or composite output you need to build these yourself but you won’t need a modchip for that since you already have this on the build in chip. But the result is absolutely amazing.
@@Pulverrostmannen upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ac/FrenchNESRGBOutput.jpg
@@Pulverrostmannen agreed, I modified my SMS2 years ago (including RGB among many other things) and the picture is great!
@@peteanderson2533 Absolutely. I began my Sega experience with the MS2 console with only RF picture and even then I thought it looked pretty bad. My first mod way later was to add Composite video and I was amazed how much better it got. And later I put the RGB mod to it and was like OMG how is it even possible to be so much better than composite. It’s insane and really fun to see and experience
I had a Master System and NZ Story too.
I liked it and the mk1 had those cool card games.
Memorable titles for me are Lucky Dime Caper, Sonic Chaos, Psycho Fox, and Rastan.
Most underrated channel on UA-cam. How do you not have a million subs by now?
Thanks!
When us kids saw Super Mario that's what we wanted.. most of us didn't even know the master system existed until we were teenagers. Nintendo had the marketing that most of us saw making us want a NES..
Audio: Yeah, I know the SMS chip was inferior and the manifestation of that was often how darn similar music sounded across the library.
Having grown up with an SMS though for some reason it's music is more endearing to me. Specifically Phantasy Star of course. I found an OST of the JP version played on the FM Synth Upgrade module and... it just sounds wrong to me.
10:39 " The master System cant do this "
As can be seen right here 4:51 - You can see in this SMS game they have not bothered add in sprite/animation for walking left. So when he walks left. He faces right, but moves to the left.
And then there's the game packaging. While U.S. releases had rather plain artwork, Europe and Brazil saw much more colorful cover art. Here in the states it has always been easier to find SMS releases complete as opposed to those for the NES, as the NES packaging tended to be thrown away. While it's true that the Yamaha FM sound chip was only built into the Japanese SMS (I own one), many western SMS game releases had the code for FM sound still in the game.
The order I bought my 8-bit consoles: Atari 2600, Western NTSC SMS Model 1, NES Model 1, Atari 7800, NES Model 2, Japanese SMS. I can tell you that the Model 1 SMS is far more reliable than the Model 1 NES (those darn pins!). My original Model 1 SMS and 7800 are still going strong!
The Japanese SMS also has built-in 3D and Rapid Fire hardware, and native backwards compatibility with games for the Sega SG-1000, SC-3000, Mark III, and rare Othello Multivision. The 7800 has native backwards compatibility with games for the VCS/2600. I have no problems playing most PAL releases on my Western NTSC SMS (some 3D games have problems though as I use an HD flatscreeen). I've never tried to play PAL releases in a 2600, but all PAL 2600 releases that I've tried on my 7800 play fine. Sometimes with PAL games they initially come up in black & white, but if I turn my 7800 off and then back on they usually come up in color. I haven't tried any PAL NES games on my Western NES consoles.
I'd love to see a comparison between the C64 and SMS or NES. I'd imagine it would be a battle of audio vs video.
c64 was killed by its 16 colors at a resolution of 160x200 :(
Yes and no
Awesome Sound
People still making some great C64 games - lots - not just a few
Longevity is Huge
Joystick was 1 button
It would make an interesting video
@@nattila7713 not to forget with a 4 colour limitation per cell & 3 colour sprite limitation!
.. but that's a home computer from 1982! By that standard, it's more than just fine. Plus being the most successful single spec computer of all time, they've found ways of seriously pushing it wayyy past what was intended.
@@MrLtia1234 yes, I know.... still for me it was color palette. 16 quickly became boring, especially due to RF signal you must have avoided lots of combinations. I could lived with the other limitations IF there was a 64-256 palette to choose from. dreaming of a childhood I never had :D
I like SMS sound, but in my mind, the main place where the NES really has the SMS beat is sound. Even if we consider the Japan-only FM sound provided by the YM2413, the fact that the instruments aren't changeable really puts it below on-board NES sound in the end. The FM instruments on the YM2413 may be technically more advanced technology, but they just don't sound good. Just not that impressive. And this is coming from a lover of SMS sound. The NES just does it better.
The FM wasn't very interestingly used in the SMS games though, but if you look for MSX computer games with this chip you can find much better music made with it.
That lack of a triangle channel really cripples the Master System's audio. The bass could've help the SMS output a more diverse sound.
@@wolfboy527 Yes, and the NES often used a recorded sample for percussion (Sunsoft even used samples for the bass). The SMS couldn't do that -- recorded voices on the SMS required the whole game to pause. Instead the stock SMS just uses the white noise channel for percussion.
great video! would love to see one with NES vs GAMEBOY because those are not very clear cut either. on paper Gameboy has a faster CPU but NES has a faster PPU. also some instructions take more cycles to process on one vs the other.
I bought a 35$ handheld emulator or ebay and i can't be more satisfied with it. I tried about 50 games (PS1,N64,SNES,NES,SMS,GG,GB,GBC,GBA etc etc etc) and they all play great. Best 35$ ive spent in a long time.
What a great random discovery this guy is great love your stuff
An interesting comparison is Wonderboy in monsterland to Saiyūki World with the nes having less colours but more detailed sprites. I don't think there are any motorcycles games on nes such as mach rider that compare to hang on.
Consider though that Wonderboy was a pretty faithful port of an arcade game, while Saiyuki World is taking the same game and changing it's aesthetic and story to fit.
Also there are other games you can compare, Outrun on the SMS to Rad Racer on the NES, I always felt the Rad Racer engine could have made a great port of Outrun on the NES, it was really smooth. Sega made an effort to port Outrun to the SMS but it was very choppy.
Great video. The thing I always look at when it comes to the old "playground debate" of which was better, we just have to look at what ultimately made the choice for us...the games. If Nintendo didn't have the monopoly on games, would the Master System had gotten a stronger foothold in the US (Being from the USA, I base this entire point I am making on just my geographical location). Sega just didn't have the support. I would have loved to see which would have turned out better. I am also curious (albeit pointlessly) how the Atari 7800 would have competed if the Trammel family didn't cut the console division down at the knee caps when they took over. The NES and Atari 7800 have almost identical specs minus a few key differences that put the NES just ahead of the 7800.
It possibly would have been more even, like in Europe.
Atari didnt have good game designers, even before the Tramiel family took over. Their best game developers started Activision, and not too long after that, all the good game designers started to slowly leave to join Activision. Ray Kassar didnt understand game designers, nor did he try to.
Jack Tramiel knew where their technical skill was, designing computers, and with Japanese companies making game consoles, knew they couldnt compete against them. Eventually, they took other companies designs for consoles and marketed them (suing these console makers along the way).
Even if they did market the 7800 properly, it wouldnt have gained ground in Japan, and Tramiel wouldnt dare market the console there anyways. I argue that if the 7800 was marketed properly, they likely would have had some success in Europe (Jack Tramiel had lots of contacts there) and the US. There was a lot of animosity in North America to the way Nintendo kept an iron fist towards game developers, which is why most of the best games were made by Japanese companies. They wouldnt have beat Nintendo, both because they had all the best games, and because retailers and suppliers would have given Tramiel a hard time after he screwed as many people as he could in the past.
The SMS might be have an edge if game consoles weren't for playing games on. You just can't overcome the kind of support the NES had throughout its life from Konami, Capcom, Hudson, Rare, Tecmo, Sunsoft, Square, Enix, etc.
Not to mention that the NES' runaway success spurred the development of advanced expansion chips that made the likes of Kirby's Adventure possible.
It's all about those games.
So then you could say the same about the Genesis. Every game I played Genesis it was much more responsive with no lag. I would say the SMS and the NES had nearly the same number of quality titles.
Out of the box the SMS is just a MUCH more powerful system. Problem is, the NES has some tricks up its sleeve via onboard chips in the cartridges. I think there are even NES games with audio chips in the cartridge. The Famicom is pretty impressive given it was released 11 months after the Colecovision. Not even a year. Whereas the Master System wasn't released until November 1985, more than 2 years after the Famicom. Of course, the Master System (Mark III) was hampered by its backward compatibility with the SG1000 (the SMS can play SG1000 games).
I call this color stuff "rules" Like EGA is a true 16 color system. Any pixel can be any of the colors without limitation. This is true on the main screen of the Amiga too, I believe. Whereas most of the 8 bit game system have tons of rules about color, which you explain nicely.
I think people forget the time difference. Mid-1983 to late 1985. And then the PC Engine in late 1987, and the Megadrive one year later, was this the time when the tech was moving forward the quickest?
@@Halbared Well, it was moving forward very quickly at a time when even small improvements made a large difference. The falling of RAM prices (via "Moore's Law") and the rapid increase in the number of transistors in a square centimeter both allowed increases in graphics power that was very noticable. A lot of colors needs more RAM and a better faster chip for moving around more colorful sprites. (example, if you want a 4 color sprite, each pixel of the sprite needs 2 bits of RAM (00, 01, 10, 11) where each pair combination represents 1 of the 4 available colors. Whereas if you want 8 colors, you need 3 bits of ram per pixel or for 16 colors you need 4 bits of ram per pixel)
The 18 month doubling doesn't really affect modern computers as much as it did early computers.
@@tarstarkusz Yes, that's what I thought, informative, thank you.
just leaving this 3rd comment to help you out in the YT algorithm :), your channel is what i fall asleep listening to every night, keep it up ! Cheers from Canada
This video sort of supports a thesis I've had about Nintendo since the Wii days. They are happy to do more with inferior tech. Sometimes they devise workarounds (like the enhancement chips in the NES or ram pack for N64). But the gameboy, wii and now the switch are all examples of successful game systems that don't engage with the race for more polygons, resolution or processing power.
That really only became a thing in the Wii days, prior to that it was definitely a race for power. The budget was mainly what would cap the power. The need for add-ons to provide the extra bits is the evidence for that. Which also made games somewhat pricey. The Gamecube is kinda when they gave up on the power race after it didn't pay off too well. The diminishing returns was just starting to become a thing at the time as well, unfortunately for Sega who had fallen too far behind with the Dreamcast.
Famicom came out in 1983 though, long before Sega mark 3. The Sega console that completed with Famicom in Japan, the SG-1000, was basically a colecovision.
love all your vids sharopolis. keep the videos coming
Master System was capable of better graphics, but the NES had a better PCM sound chip (not counting FM or any expansions) and I think the NES had more memorable and standout games overall, especially in Japan and North America.
I love the look of SMS games, and it has a pretty interesting library (with a bit less of the licensed shlock and shovelware on NES). That said, often NES games seem to be snappier with SMS games feeling ‘soft,’ with some notable exceptions. It’s not a controller thing since it’s the case on emulators, and it’s not necessarily a bad thing, just and observation
Yea. Thier is a slickness of accuracy the nes has that’s noticeable
@@blastproces It's hard to put my finger on exactly why. It would be interesting to see some kind of test
I noticed Master System background tiles allows transparent features,it is found in Golden Axe and altered beast. This feature allows the Master System to get on pace with their new competitors.
I liked the nes more even though the Master system was a more powerful system.
We demand part 2 😄
I really like this new format. I'd love to see more
Part of the problem with the Master System is that it took until about 1987 for Sega to get out of the arcade-first mindset and realize that software developers were partners, not competitors, and by that point they were out of time for the Master System because Nintendo had locked up the entire development ecosystem to what later proved to be illegally anticompetitive license deals. It would take until 1990 for the rights issue to be worked out in the courts and by that point, Sega was full-bore on the Mega Drive/Genesis.
Sega didn't really escape that mindset for a long time, though. Pandemonium's interview with the Virtua Racer Saturn team reveals just how eager Sega was to screw over 3rd parties with debugger systems that were hard to come by, and prevented you from accessing the system's full power.
How Sega of Japan didn't realize this would blow up in their faces is anyone's guess. Both Nintendo and Sony kept secrets too, but not to the point where most 3rd parties were only tapping into half the power of the hardware.
It's an excellent point that a lot don't know about. The way Sega treated the other houses at the start (and also possible Yakuza connections from what I've read) made the bed for NIntendo to enable them to build an empire publishers. I see so many comments cross about the deals Nintendo had not understanding what created this world.
This is a pretty good point, because I see a lot of comments saying things along the lines of "the NES had better games". While true by a consensus, this is a result of the tools palette that's given to the artist, or in this case, the programming teams. Had the NES only released 2 games ever (let's just say NES Golf and Pinball), SMS would have the advantage because there's not enough variety to justify it being the better system in hindsight. I see this video topic more in the lines of "who bought the better supplies at the art store" while "who painted the better pictures with what they bought" can be treated as results and evidence. Conclusive yet subjective within reason.
Sega really didn't have many companies to work with until at least mid-1989 while Nintendo had a 3rd party empire of companies cranking out classics that Sega never had access to in the entire SMS lifespan. Sega still came out with good games, but I think there's value in seeing what other establishments can pull off with your system. Companies like Konami and Capcom have visions that could not only push the SMS games and technical prowess in a better way, but a different way. They never got that chance of course, which is another topic altogether.
*2A03, FDS, MMC5, VRC6, SB5, VRC7, N163 Is NES Sound Chip. MMC5 Is Used On Castlevania 3: Dracula's Curse American & European Version. FDS Sound Chip Is Used On Japan Famicom Disk System. Used On Japan Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels Ending Theme, The Legend Of Zelda (Japan FDS Version) Intro Theme, Ending Theme, Sounds & Other. VRC7 Is Used On Konami's Lagrange Point Game. VRC6 Is Used On Castlevania 3: Dracula's Curse Japan Version*
The CPU's are indeed very close to each other. The one critical difference though is the z80's bus is also twice the speed. Which makes sharing devices across its bus a bit easier to do. There is much more bandwidth. And the 6502's higher IPC means it will interrupt the bus more wanting data. So any chained devices with the 6502 will proportionally hurt its performance more than on the z80. As far as which one is easier to program for..... I don't know that. Different developers have their preferences for one or the other. I do think the 6502 had a bit easier time optimizing for, but don't know for sure.
Growing up in the UK, I didn't know one person at school who had a nes.
We all had microcomputers (speccy/commodore/amstrad etc) or the Mighty Master System.
Nintendo wasn't a thing here until the SNES and Gameboy.
Same in New Zealand
I never saw an SMS in the wild, or at thrift stores. All I ever saw was an SMS gamepad that turned out to work with my Atari 2600 just fine (though only one fire button). I guess it just wasn't a big seller in the US the way the NES was.
Top video! Looking forward to the next one :)
Master System is technically superior, but the NES had the better game library by far (although it's only due to Nintendo's shady and very unfair business practices at the time.) NES also had the better controller by far, with a better D-pad and 2 extra buttons. Lastly, you can pause an NES game by pressing the start button. On Master System the pause button was on the console itself, which means you had to walk over to the console every time you needed to use it. Thank God they remedied all of the controller issues with the Genesis controller.
Nes sound destroys base SMS sound.
i honestly knew nothing about the master system (ive played alex kidd and phantasy star 1 and thats it) so this is a really interesting video, very cool!
Love your channel. Great info very entertaining to watch,
Just a tiny request, could you put the name of the games you are using?
A lot of the time I'm looking at them and I just want to try them out
Check out the Castlevania clone on SMS Master of Darkness. Compare its graphics to Castlevania 3. Such a huge difference in quality, it's hard to believe these two systems were from the same generation
The SMS is better than NES by far. The NES with a lot of chips in cartridge can be better than SMS.
The VDP doesn't have the feature to flip sprites, but the z80 has opcodes that the games used to flip them mathematically. I've coded emulators for both systems and discovered how it does it building them.
The Master System was my first game console, so it has a special place in my heart. That said, the NES is much better.
It goes to show that, in the end, it's all about the games. Kudos for the Master System for its impressive graphics, though.
Ok, it is BONKERS to me that you can't flip sprites on the SMS! I did not know that, I thought it would have been a super standard feature for the time
You can flip sprites on the SMS. Its just you have to store them in video memory and the cpu can create a new sprite flipped based on the original. The problem is the process took a lot of time and processing power. It was quicker to have two separate sprites.
The sprite flipping, maybe that's why Haggar's suspender strap has always confused the hell out of me...?
This is why Deejay from Street Fighter has 'maximum' written down his trousers - every letter in the word looks the same when flipped horizontally.
Yes, that is why. And why a lot of characters change from right-handed to left-handed when turning around.
NES for its stock sound, performance and wide variety of sound expansion chips, memory mappers, accessories and game library.
Master System for its stock graphics and FM sound expansion.
Another comparison could be Gamegear vs Nes since it had that megaman and the only real difference between MS and GG was resolution and how many color pallets it had (but not being used at once.)
Along with the known ones, some European developers pushed out great visuals on the Master System.
Check games like Wolfchild, Robocop vs Terminator, Shadow of the Beast, Mortal Kombats, Ottifants,etc.
Then we have the superb Brazilian Street Fighter 2 port.
NES had great vertical shootmups that pushed its power.
Yea probe really made some good later titles I’d include Incredible Hulk as another sms game that looks almost 16 bit
Wolfchild's visuals are incredible, just a shame its sound is the opposite.
This was pretty fun. I know the NES had a tone of enhancement chips but I'm not sure if the same was true for the SMS
No it didn’t it has more memory and a stupidly faster cpu
It had some, but it wasn't designed to be as expandable through the cartridge port.
People get very tetchy about retro gear criticism in the comments section. I was once called a "fascist" for claiming the Acorn Electron was under-powered.
Literally worse than Hitler.
@@SiarMortal I know, right?
How dare you! If anything it was overpowered!!
..by almost any other system! :P
@@DehnusNorder that's funny!
People interested in video games and the like above a certain degree, tend to be a bit....focussed. :D
That's a tough one I love them both in there own ways but if I had to choose then I would have to say my gut is telling me the NES for its classics like Mario and Zelda the NES does have the better library but I don't dismiss the Master System with it's greats too like sonic and Alex the Kidd and others but the NES is the winner in my book
My heart goes to SMS since it was my 1st console. Alex Kidd in Miracle World and Sonic the Hedgehog 🥰
Coming up next on Sharopolis, who would win in a fight to the death, a tortoise, or a turtle
I think the NES had an overall better design, but to be fair, it did have more hardware revisions behind it. It’s also really hard not to be biased when we talk about the SMS, I just wasn’t exposed to it like I was the NES so while I say the NES is better, I never owned a SMS so how could I really know?
As a developer, I can tell you my opinion is that a Z80 running at the same speed as a 6502, is much better. If you look at the instruction set, the Z80 is so much easier to code for, and the instructions accomplish more per cycle, you can do in one instruction, what might take 5 instructions on the 6502. Yeah, it takes more clock cycles to complete an instruction on the Z80, but at basically double the MHz, that has it running at effectively the same speed, with more powerful instructions.
I've watched some side-by-side footage of ports that exist on both systems, complete with the audio from each system being split left and right. There are several games in which the NES version had background music, while the SMS version just didn't bother. In these cases, when the graphics of the two ports were fairly close, this gave a clear edge to NES. There are even a few cases where the SMS graphics are unbiasedly better, but the whole lack of background music makes it a toss-up as to which port was better.
There also a few games that simply had more talented artists working the NES port, occasionally giving the NES the edge despite the graphical limitations. All that said, SMS probably has the edge in 75% of the cases where a game was ported to both systems.