As much as I love the thing, the Genesis I think was actually overrated. It was an aggressive advertising campaign, Nintendo's lack of an answer for so long, and some very good exclusives (including Sonic) that put the system on top, not any merits of the system itself. Side by side, the SNES is clearly the better system, and games that appeared on both systems were nearly always better on the SNES.

And while neither company could have known it at the time, the Genesis's 3 buttons were a serious liability at a time when the video game king of the universe was Street Fighter II.

I just want to make it clear I love Genesis and would probably take one over a SNES given the choice.

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There are also people who will argue that a lot of games played better on the Genesis because it could process faster.

"Blast processing" was a lie. There was absolutely no truth behind it. Just a marketing gimmick.

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The Genesis did have a 6 button controller that became very popular, but it was never packaged with the system.

Exactly. So every game made after that either sucked with 3 buttons (Eternal Champions), had pointless extra uses for the 3 buttons (Comix Zone), or just didn't use then at all.

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it was also Metroid vs. Vectorman, Kirby vs. Ristar, F-Zero vs. Out Run

Huh? Those three comparisons don't even come close. You're comparing two very different games in each case, unless you classify them very generically.

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Aladdin is much better on Genesis than on SNES.

I completely disagree. They're also different games made by different companies in different styles, so you can't really compare them head to head. Sega's did look better, though.

As far as games, it was really Sega's first-party stuff, and EA's great effort (EA had a great relationship with Sega), that kept them going so well. Sega's exclusives were not all awesome games, but they were all interesting and pretty cool at the very least.

And shame on all of you for not saying Shining Force.

Syd Lexia wrote:

Dynamite Heddy and Gunstar Heroes FTW! And blast processing, marketing gimmick or not, was not a lie. Sonic ran much faster than the SNES could realistically handle. That's why we got Uniracers. Nintendo wanted a fast game, and the only way to do it was to nerf the graphics.

I remember speaking to a Sega customer service rep once and he said there was no special "blast processing" ability.

The ability of Sonic's camera to keep up with Sonic was something I thought was a function of the game, not the system itself (the Sonic games use more than one trick to give the illusion of speed). And don't forget that Sonic itself was pretty simple graphically, at least Sonic 1 was (note how when they prettied it up in the sequels, the games seemed noticeably slower)