Board 8 > Was the sega genesis the superior system or the snes?

(+) Yeah! (+)

which

Aren't the SNES and PS2 widely considered to have the best game libraries of all time?

SNES by a mile

Genesis definitely had more soul, though

as someone who owned a Genesis over an SNES during the 16 bit era and didn't get an SNES until N64 was already out

no the SNES was far superior

At the time I owned a Genesis and not an SNES and I can say for sure the better system was the SNES. The Genesis was by no means bad, and in some areas it actually was the better system, but overall the SNES library has far more games that hold up over time.

Genesis has some of my favorite games and games I grew up with. It's still SNES

SNES does what Genesis don't

snes has way too many of what are still my fav games of all time

Mega Drive > Super Nintendo.

But both are excellent. I just grew up with a Mega Drive and to be honest all the Mario games on the Super Nintendo are overrated anyway.

There was that time between 1992 and before Donkey Kong Country and Super Metroid where Genesis was the better system.

After that there's no brainer that the SNES was the superior system.

Lord Ephraim posted...

There was that time between 1992 and before Donkey Kong Country and Super Metroid where Genesis was the better system.

Worth noting the Sega Genesis came out in 1989, and the SNES came out in 1991, so two extra years of building up a game library.

Like, there was absolutely a time around 1991-1992 when I felt the NES just had the superior library to the SNES too, just because it had years to build up its library. (SMB3 was largely seen as better than Mario World at the time, and very few people really cared about other launch SNES stuff like the original F-Zero or Pilotwings which were mostly seen as tech demos, and not that fun).

What the last two people said. Genesis had its day, but in the long-term, it's 100% SNES.

At the time the generation was seen as a fairly competitive one but probably with SNES winning in the end due to its stronger finish.
Since then:
-People don't care nearly as much about the Sports games, which were generally a Genesis strength.
-People care much more about the JRPGs, which were a SNES strength.
-With imports considered the SNES library like doubles in size whereas the Genesis doesn't increase all that hugely. Even throwing in the Sega CD and 32x games on Genesis' side doesn't balance out the scales.

I owned a Mega Drive and my cousin had a SNES so i got the best of both worlds. The Mega Drive has some incredible games but the SNES was probably the better system overall. It also had the advantage of more buttons on the controller. Although the Mega Drive pad was still good.

Also worth noting that the Sega CD and especially the 32X were generally regarded as high profile failures and killed a lot of good will that the Genesis had built up early in its life.

I do think the Master System was miles better than the NES though at least here in Europe.

Not sure which all NES games came out in Europe but the selection would have to have been dire indeed to put the Master System over it.

shane15 posted...

I do think the Master System was miles better than the NES though at least here in Europe.

I didn't even know the Master System existed until at least 2010.

The Genesis was quite competitive at the time, but a lot of their heavy hitters didn't exactly age well.

Survivorship bias also helps the SNES be more memorable as many of the series continued post-SNES while a lot of Genesis games didn't make it past the generation or died out quite quickly after that.

It also helps that SNES owners were more concentrated on certain games and thus became more memorable among a wide audience while Genesis owners bought a large variety of games and thus games one person loved may not have been played by other people on the console.

charmander6000 posted...

It also helps that SNES owners were more concentrated on certain games and thus became more memorable among a wide audience while Genesis owners bought a large variety of games and thus games one person loved may not have been played by other people on the console.

This feels like a weird statement. Where is this info coming from

Conservative estimates have the SNES and Genesis with similar software attach rate (ignoring the claims by Sega that they outsold Nintendo software by an almost 2:1 ratio) yet looking at Wikipedia, the SNES had over 20 games which sold 2 million copies yet the Genesis is listed with six (though admittedly the page feels a bit sparse), this suggests a more varied purchasing habit among Genesis owners.

I was a Genesis owner as a kid and never owned a super nintendo. I had pleasant memories playing on the Genesis.