Talking 'Bout This Generation

[kedawa]

The NeoGeo is a boutique system that was subsidized by its arcade counterpart, and supported by a first-party whose games were rather popular at the time.
The only way we could have a high end premium system today is if Sony or MS decided to make a higher end version of their console with beefed up specs and higher quality components, and made it trivial for developers to support the both specs with their games. The stuff Sony's been saying about PS3-NGP cross platform development makes me think that something like that is easily possible, but there's no chance of it happening.

[Frogacuda]

I agree with that. I don't mean the longevity as much as I do the relative power. So I am thinking of Neo Geo 1991-1996 or so, not Neo Geo 1991-2007.

Even then, this falls apart. A few objections:

1) For the most part, you AREN'T discussing power at all, but rather the advantages of an extremely pricey storage medium. In certain ways the Super NES was more powerful than the Neo Geo, and could certainly handle a game like, say, Pulstar or Metal Slug, but no one was going to make a 300 meg cartridge and sell it for $400, because there was no market. Even more true for Saturn, which DID have a cart slot, but it went unused because no one would pay for a game that cost that much. It's not a "power" issue at all.

2) Neo Geo was never a high end system, it was a low-end arcade machine that occupied a weird horizon that gave it room to narrowly cross into the consumer market, BUT there were much, much more powerful systems out there in the arcades. It's no different than the CPS Changer,really. This market doesn't exist now, as the high-end is targeted toward the PC.

3) The advent of 3D acceleration cards on PCs in the late-90s COMPLETELY disrupted the idea that consoles (and even arcades to some extent) had a technical advantage for gaming. Traditionally, consoles got by with hardware that was, in fact, very inexpensive and not very powerful by computer standards (Neo Geo would have made a shitty PC), but had hardware support for tiles, scrolling, scaling, etc that allowed them to perform the usual game functions better than their PC counterparts. Once the Voodoo hit and out-performed even the best arcade and console hardware for graphical functions, consoles couldn't really get away with this anymore.

PC gaming is the premium market as far as hardware goes. THAT is the hardware that 15 years ago would have been in our best arcade machines.

[Yoshi]

The fact is that the Neo had more technically impressive games than its competitors for years. I fully understand that this is despite the fact that it shared a CPU with the Genesis, for example. There were lots of factors aside from the hardware itself. Some of it is a kin to how the Blu-Ray is finally becoming an advantage for the PS3. But the why isn't the point here. It's the result. If a solid state drive is required to get the same effect today, put it in there.

[Brisco Bold]

All I know is that, as late as the Dreamcast era (and probably after, I stopped paying attention to those crazies eventually), the hardcore Neo-Geo supporters were still championing their hardware because of the supposedly inferior ports of games. If anything SNK was botching them on purpose.

I always wondered about that. You couldn't get perfect ports of their games on the SNES or Genesis, but it was possible to have functional, playable titles. And quite a lot of those ports were not.

[icarusfall]

I want to eat panda meat.

[Bojack]

Yes, one game on launch window compilation is clearly a hardware pusher.

Not sure what you're getting at here but I'll forge ahead anyways. Notice I didn't say Raiden Project but indicated Raiden 2 specifically. You asked for a Saturn or PS1 title that could match the visual splendor of your championed R-Type knock off so I did.

If a slow ass game like Pulstar is pushing the NeoGeo then it's clearly not a very strong system. Raiden 2 easily and quickly pushed multiple times the amount of on screen shit as Pulstar all the while looking crisp and intricately detailed. I might also add that DDP appeard on Saturn so two games that arguably blow Pulstar out of the water visually. I've watched the whole game from title to credits and don't see anything that couldn't have been done on PS1 if not the Saturn.

It's a different genre but I'd wager SotN beats Pulstar too. I'd even go far enough to suggest that Drac X beats out R-Type with Donkey Kong Country grafx in space.

[Nash]

The correct answer was already given:

[YellerDog]

In the Hunt really is the best horizontal subump.

[Bojack]

Damn, overlooked Nash's post in my zeal to point out how slow, boring, and unimpressive Pulstar looks. Yes, In the Hunt looks better than Pulstar too. Well played Nash.

[Diff-chan]

I thought this thread was about this generation, not old fuck games nobody has cared about for 15 years.