so, growing up i was mostly a snes kid. i owned (and played) many classics such as chrono trigger, secret of mana, final fantasy vi, yoshi's island, earthbound, contra 3, etc. and there was , in my mind, little that could surpass these juggernauts of 90's-era entertainment. when i would go over my best friend's house we'd play on his sega genesis and i'd think "oh my, these graphics are terrible and the sound is just awful!" and i found that this was especially the case with cross platform titles. fewer colors, fewer effects, weird sound... it just wasn't for me.

so recently i've been replaying a lot of snes titles i loved as a kid, and this in turn has caused me to dip my toes into the genesis pond a bit more.

i gotta say, now that i'm older i quite appreciate the often darker more limited color pallet of the genesis, the tighter screen resolution, and the more unique punchy sound. whereas much of the snes library seems buffed to an incredibly soft and lovable sheen the genesis library feels as though it as teeth (from a graphics and sound standpoint in-particular) and not in a bad way. i love the use of blacks in the way the developers designed the graphics sround the system's limitations. the nes did this frequently. it always felt like something secret could be hiding just beyond the veil of shadow, even when there usually wasn't, and that sense of mystery often engaged me my nes days. this was lost a bit with the snes' 256-color graphics, at the time i didn't realize it.

what do you guys think?

Interesting thoughts. I never really thought about the differences between the Snes and Genesis, but now that you've put it into words, yeah, I agree with a lot of what you typed.

Nintendo's always seemed to get the most out of its systems, I think that's why its first party titles are so loved, despite being aimed at a larger audience than other consoles' "Rated M for Mature" first party titles.

In regards to sound, I hate how often people dismiss the Mega Drive. It's not really worse than the SNES, just different. The problem came when making multiplatform games the SNES was the primary platform, and they'd just squeeze the SNES soundtrack into the Mega Drive chip, the result was unsurprisingly subpar by comparison.

Games that were made specifically for the Mega Drive and knew its strengths, a more pop and techno style of music, were very good.

For example:

Sonic 3 - Hydrocity Zone Act 2

Streets of Rage 2 - Go Straight

I'll give the Mega Drive this. When the composers were given proper documentation to work with, it often produced good results. For example, most of the Pulseman Soundtrack. Therein lies the issue. (Documentation often never reached the composers in the west.)
But even things directly from Sega itself often missed the mark. Like Sonic Spinball & Phantasy Snare Drum 2. Or Sonic Eraser.

Not to mention, I've never once heard a Mega Drive track that sounds like an orchestra . Can I hear an Opera on the Mega Drive? Can I hear absolute comfort in song form?

I loved the sound track too Sword of Vermillion. I still hum some of them. And nothing beats its dramatic opening.

Sega Genesis has some amazing games that I was lucky to play:

Target Earth was fun and brutally hard
Sonic (of course)
Sword of Vermillion
Rings of Power (most deserving of a remake)
I even like Ecco but couldn't beat it for the life of me.

Was always a Genesis guy, Games like sonic 3, and knuckles, Adventures of batman and robin and musha that I still own are what really made me love the system. The sound.. It has to be the sound that does something. The snes has some good stuff but I agree that it has a softer feeling and music is more soft with less that bang that the yamaha chip offers.

but lately I been playing SNES a lot due to the Gundam Series I got my hands on lately.

Forgot to add this little gem

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdY4EKAcW4Q

And this, This is the soundtrack that can't be beat on the Genesis

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_n_eHN-ArK8

Mega Drive and Super FamiCom, IMO, can not be compared directly. They are two vastly different systems with totally different "philosophy" behind game development.

Some points:
1) CPU: SFC used custom CPU (Ricoh 5A22) with excellent (due its time) video subsystem but weak general processing powers (do not attempt to play KOEI strategies on SFC unless you are enjoying watching CPU to take ages to finish its turn). And of cource, "Blast Processing"™!!! Mega Drive wins!

2) Graphics: Mega Drive has wider horizontal screen resolution but SFC compensates with non-square pixels (it just stretches the image) and has definite advantage in colors-on-the-screen aspect. This, coupled with custom graphics SPUs in the cartridges resulted in Super Famicom superiority (more artistic freedom for developers). Oh, and MD didn't have alpha channel, so no proper transparency. SFC wins!

3) Sound: Well, they are totally different and shine (or suck) equally, just in different aspects. Mega Drive had excellent FM-synthesis chip that gave it clear, robust, but unnatural sound, appropriate for 80' electronic dance music (hear Yuzo Koshiro's tracks for Bare Knuckle franchise) but any appempts at classical "natural" music were futile (not to mention voice). SFC used wavetable syntesis somewhat akin to tracker modules from Amiga which could have real musical instruments recorded in the samples (compressed ADPCM), enabling voice and orchestra in the sound, but it was only 32kHz, literally just everything sounded dull and flat. Result: parity (some genres are better on one system or another).

Overall, these systems were very different, unique in their ways and equally interesting. No, you can't. See my sound opinion. But you can have this...

and these...

and these pieces.

Yeah, if you must.

Bethoven's Moonlight Sonata 1st Movement from Earthworm Jim 2

I said it in my post: neither is better, they're just different. The SNES is better at replicating real instruments. The Mega Drive sounds way more synth. That doesn't make one inherently better than the other, it just means they excel at different things.

Not to say that it never replicated real instruments well, but it usually fell more on the Jazz side of things. It was pretty good with drums, if not so much strings.

And since I'm here:

The Revenge of Shinobi - Make Me Dance

Streets of Rage - Slow Moon

Side Pocket - Chillin'

Columns 3: Revenge of Columns - Chinese Bicycle

i have been playing adventures of batman and robin with my 3-year old, and man... it's sooooo different than its SNES counterpart, which is okay too, but it doesn't feel as wild and unique as the Genesis version. and hot damn, that first boss with that thumping beat in the background is just something.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpmTTTohgRc

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