NES Vs SMS

Comments · 933

• SH

  @Sharopolis · 4 years ago · pinned

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• MY

  @MystMagus · 4 years ago

  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.

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• P5

  @P5ychoFox · 4 years ago

  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.

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• AS

  @Asterra2 · 4 years ago

  Definitely feel like the whole story wasn&apos;t being told when it came to the differences in audio (ignoring Japanese-exclusive scenarios). &nbsp;Sure, it was established that the NES audio was better. &nbsp;But it really needed to be underscored that the main issue with the SMS&apos;s sound was that it was flatly incapable of providing bass. &nbsp;I think the lowest frequency those square waves could reach was something like 100Hz? &nbsp;<b>Multiple</b> octaves were left on the table. &nbsp;And what makes this worse is that really good bass is precisely what the NES&apos;s triangle channel is excellent at providing. &nbsp;It&apos;s simply not enough to say the NES&apos;s audio was more capable—the SMS&apos;s sound was basically hamstrung by unnecessary limitations.

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• DI

  @diegocrusius · 4 years ago

  I did not know the master system couldnt flip its sprites. This is why they took &apos;advantage&apos; 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.

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• TH

  @thegreathadoken6808 · 4 years ago

  Personally I think that if you could somehow have given the Mark III (with it&apos;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.

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• LI

  @linkthehero8431 · 4 years ago

  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoddAPZD7Pc&amp;t=369">6:09</a> Those animated story sequences in Ninja Gaiden were impressive on the NES.

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• CH

  @chrismcovell · 4 years ago

  Even with no NES expansion chips to confuse things, (as mentioned in the video) the SMS&apos; eating into its own VRAM is its biggest graphical limitation. &nbsp;A 2-player game, and one player is pointing to the left? &nbsp;Need 2 sets of tiles, one for each player.<br>A game like Ironman Stewart&apos;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; &nbsp;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. &nbsp;That&apos;s just one example that immediately springs to mind.

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• DJ

  @djjava303 · 4 years ago

  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.

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• YF

  @yfz350twin · 3 years ago

  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&apos;t believe how much better it was on the SMS. &nbsp;I don&apos;t even recall the NES version being 2 player.

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• GE

  @georgeluyckx1437 · 4 years ago

  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.

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• VE

  @VehementisVeri · 4 years ago (edited)

  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 &nbsp;the sprite palette, which can be color 0. Background tile attributes additionally allowed some impressive sprite masking.<br>The SMS&apos;s 256x224 and 256x240 modes were rarely used, because the first iterations of the SMS don&apos;t support them. This incompatibility even returned on the Power Base Converter for the MD/Genesis.<br>The NES has 256x240 pixel nametables, but NTSC systems crop the image to 256x224.<br>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&apos;s still deemed impossible.<br>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.<br><br>It&apos;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.

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