Microsoft bans FOSS from Windows Phone Marketplace

[devius]

Well, if we get technical, the Megadrive did have two things in it's favour. It was faster, 68000 at 8mhz versus Snes which had a 65816 at 3.5mhz

That's right. But the SNES had a graphics chip which was working at twice the clock speed of the megadrive one, had more video ram and it could display 4 times more colors on screen and could choose those colors from a larger pallete. So in practice SNES games looked way more advanced than the Mega Drive one's. I never played a SNES game that felt slow. Too bad there weren't more games like Thunderforce for the MD that could really make use of the faster CPU.
Did you work on any famous game on the SNES?

PS: @BlackStar Talking about SNES and Mega Drive is so much better than talking about Windows Phone 7.

[XorEaxEax]

Did you work on any famous game on the SNES?

Heh, no, back then I was very young and part of a 'demo group' and just loved to hack away at every piece of hardware I came across. One of our demo group members did know an official developer who was nice enough to photocopy the official SNES development documentation for us though which was a great help when understanding the hardware. I remember the manual seemed to have gone through a really crude japanese to english translation with the word 'designated' thrown in every 5 words or so.

[yotambien]

Now this is a hell of a good topic for a change

I won't look it up to pretend I'm the smartest block in town, but I _think_ the Megadrive had better sound that the SNES. Something about channels...or valves...or carburators, I don't remember. As for the rest, yes, the SNES was technically more advanced than the Megadrive. For a SEGA fanboi like myself the SNES was a hard pill to take, I had to focus on irrelevant details such as the speed of the co-processor (or something) to counter the superiority of the Nintendo in most departments.

20 years later, and from the anonymity the internet offers me, I confess that somewhere in my heart I knew full well the SNES to be better overall. It was a secret, obscure object of desire; I disdained it, I abhorred it...and I wanted it.

However, when the SNES was released I had already enjoyed a shit ton of games for a couple of years or so; and even afterwards a lot of awesome games were released only for the console I was loyal to. Who can forget about playing Altered Beast with your mates in your room instead of paying for it at the bar. Or Sonic, or the Thunderforce saga, or Streets of Rage, Golden Axe, NBA Jam, Shinobi, Quackshot, Fantasia, Flashback...oh, man...

At the end, I got to play a good deal of SNES games too, and based on that--which is the only metric that matters--I wouldn't really know what to choose. SuperMario World and Legend of Zelda were trully masterpieces, probably better than anything the Megadrive ever had. Excluding those two I can think of a lot of wonderful games for both consoles that would make any kid/teen fully satisfied. Now they only care and talk about phones and shit : D

[BlackStar]

I won't look it up to pretend I'm the smartest block in town, but I _think_ the Megadrive had better sound that the SNES. Something about channels...or valves...or carburators, I don't remember.

The Megadrive used FM synthesis, while the SNES used sampling. The former is more suited to techno/electronic beats which were all the rage back then, but the latter has significantly higher overall capabilities. If you compare the best compositions for each system, the SNES wins *hands down*: it was recently proven that the APU in SNES can actually handle (near-)CD audio in realtime, given enough space (32KHz, 16bit, check youtube for "MSU1 audio"). Additionally, the Megadrive simply cannot handle orchestral compositions such as this or this.

SNES audio all the way.

[BlackStar]

Well, if we get technical, the Megadrive did have two things in it's favour. It was faster, 68000 at 8mhz versus Snes which had a 65816 at 3.5mhz (mhz, man those were the times!!). Also it had a higher resolution, 320x240 versus SNES which had 256x240. That said, SNES could handle more sprites, had 16x16 CLUT's (Megadrive had 8x8 CLUT's), 4 VRAM Tilemaps, HDMA, Mode-7 so yea I have to agree that SNES was superior, although back then when I programmed on it I didn't like the 65816 which was basically an 6502 (8-bit) with a 16 bit addressing mode.

The SNES also had a 'hi-res' 512x448 mode that was used in some games (notably Secret of Mana in the item screens), plus a metric ton of co-processors that went all the way up to 20MHz (Super-FX, SA-1 and the various DSP-#s). Let's not delve into the game library either, as that would be rather embarrassing for the Megadrive...

[BlackStar]

SNES vs Megadrive is indeed more fun than WP7

And a few more tracks for your listening pleasure:
Terranigma - Intro
Terranigma - Underworld
Mystic Quest - Doom Castle
Mystic Quest - Heat of Battle
Chrono Trigger - Frog's Theme

And a bonus one: Terranigma - Crysta live!

I dare any Megadrive fans to match or surpass those tunes!

[yotambien]

The Megadrive used FM synthesis, while the SNES used sampling. The former is more suited to techno/electronic beats which were all the rage back then, but the latter has significantly higher overall capabilities. If you compare the best compositions for each system, the SNES wins *hands down*: it was recently proven that the APU in SNES can actually handle (near-)CD audio in realtime, given enough space (32KHz, 16bit, check youtube for "MSU1 audio"). Additionally, the Megadrive simply cannot handle orchestral compositions such as this or this.
SNES audio all the way.

I'm not sure. This sounds awesome. But what you say makes sense; there actually was a lack of orquestral arrangements in the Megadrive games...Back then it wasn't much of a problem, though. Even the music of some MSX game cartridges still sound great to my ears nowadays.

[yotambien]

Awesome tunes.

I'll play:

How about this for an intro?
Hellfire Stage 1
Hellfire Stage 3
Hellfire stage 4
Cool Spot bonus track music

Nemesis/Gradius II for the MSX I was talking about. The real action starts at 0:50

\: D/

[yotambien]

Last link was wrong; it belongs to the regular game version, which was good enough. But apparently Konami people came up with some awesomeness of their own to deliver this.

You just have to picture yourself going through one of the most abrasive games in terms of difficulty having a go at them aliens or whatever with that music in the background, especially

stage 1 (0:50)
stage 3 --oh, god (2:20)
stage 6 (4:25)
stage 7 --that shit was hard (5:04)
the bosses (6:55)

[BlackStar]

Quick review:
1. Thunder force IV - Metal Squad: I love the tune but the distortion is painful. It's as if the sound signal is made of sawtooth waveforms (which is probably not that far off the mark...)

2. Thunder force IV - Intro: Starts out great but becomes monotonous pretty quick, plus the music stops playing during the explosion.

3. Hellfire - didn't like those.

4. Cool Spot - awesome! This is Megadrive at its best (electronic).

5. Gradius - great tunes with awful drum sounds. I think I actually prefer the music of G2 for Megadrive over G3 for SNES - the latter sounds smoother and much more defined but the former sounds more raw and powerful.

That said, none of those even approaches the epicness of "Doom Castle" or "Terranigma Intro"... I'll give some more comparable examples of SNES electro/techno tunes tomorrow for comparison.