MS-Dos (1990-1995) vs SNES "A Fun What-if Debate"

Sup guys, i've been thinking lately, as anyone came occurred that some of the MS-Dos games starting from the early-mid 1990's looks somewhat similar to Super Famicom (SNES) graphics almost? But so, now as everyone knows about the whole SNES vs Genesis battle but now hears the catch i'd came up with, now What-If there wasn't no Sega Genesis (every SNES fanboys dream) and all we had was just DOS PCs but all of sudden that company wants to compete against the big N with the Super Nintendo?! Now (for those some-what played DOS or grew up with it BITD) what games you can think of can be a great contender to the Super Nes? Any genre counts: JRPG, Racing, Fighting, Adventure & Platforms ;-)

 

I LOVE dos gaming, as great as the SNES was, it never got Jazz Jackrabbit or Tyrain.

 

Any SNES or Genesis "fanboy" should realize that without the competition between the systems, neither would have been as great as they were. Monopolies tend to suck unless you're the one that owns it.

 

PCs of the early 90s were probably more powerful than an SNES. For example, the original DOS version of Doom had to be scaled down somewhat to run on the SNES, even with its SuperFX chip. Also, PCs had the advantage (unlike the SNES) of storing games on CD-ROM. Both the Genesis/MD and the PC Engine had CD-ROM attachments, but the SNES did not (except for the unreleased Play Station/ SNES-CD). Most people who are knowledgeable on the subject will tell you that the SNES's CPU was rather underpowered for its time.

 

Yeah true, PCs did costed more but i mean besides the ridiculous pricing of Dos platform i just mean the games themselves plus i'm pretty sure they're were a few cheaper ways (Laptops) at the time. Btw where they're any memorable JRPGs on DOS? besides Cobra Mission & a few English localised ones and i'm pretty sure Korean & Chinese ones may count too but it's something we've never gotten but at least it's Region Free on the get-go (besides SNES having to need a backup unit, either remove tabs or buy a Game Genie)

 

What do you mean by "that company"? There was never one company that made PCs back then, just like there isn't just one company today.

I grew up playing DOS games and TBH Jazz Jackrabbit hasn't aged that well: it has some serious problems with level design, mostly. The soundtrack is just great though. Most DOS platformers, shooters and action games are no match for the console ones of the time, what the PC excelled in at the time were adventure games, WRPGs, simulators and FPSs. That's because PCs were obviously much more powerful than the 16-bit consoles when it comes to sheer number-crunching power, but they never were good at 2D graphics thanks to a lack of specialized hardware for that purpose (the Amiga was a computer platform much closer to consoles in that regard).

Huh? Laptops of the time were huge, underpowered, expensive and had screens with bad ghosting that made them completely unsuitable for most games.

 

Then I guess you haven't played nearly every DOS game out there! Just check Blood Iron, Mortal Kombat 1-3 & ultimate, Super Street Fighter 2, the Korean, Chiense & Japanese (yes even the japanese had a few tho of course threw PC-98's Win 95/98 lol) if you want me to proof you wrong I'll give you a database full or half of the stuff i'd mention. Hell even checkout Fox Ranger 1 & 2 + Box Ranger and tell if that comes very close to SNES styled gaming!

 

First off, games were better generally on the SNES because it had a better video card for dealing with the common games of the time, namely sprite & tile type games. The PC's video cards didn't have that sort of hardware in them, because technically it wasn't needed for the market. And because you had different manufactures making video cards, there never was a standard for that sort of programming.

You look at the PC market at the time, and you see you not only had PC Dos, but Amiga and Atari as major PC gaming contenders. And each required different programming, and had different types of hardware to program for. On top of that, the PC Dos is a moving platform, unlike the Amiga (who took too long to update it's video hardware) and I'm not really sure about the Atari, but I think they were a little stagnant on updating their video hardware also.

So, what you got is an underpowered SNES CPU, with a decent video hardware, so it was able to make decent & fun games, really unmatched at it's time.

Now when Doom came along, it became apparent that the lack of hardware sprites & other fun things weren't as big as a deal, because the CPU was getting way more powerful and it ends up the way VGA does it's graphics, it's very beneficial to these 3D game types that was becoming very popular. This is why Doom on the SNES blows, because it's hardware isn't made for it's type of game. Also why you didn't find doom on the Amiga or Atari because how they do video graphics isn't compatible with the speed you need.

I'm going to point out that I had a 486DX-33 when Doom came out and a decently fast video card and still got around 10-12 fps on the game. lol, that was good back in the day.

 

The PC's real big technical advantage over the SNES and Mega Drive was huge pools of storage (dozens to hundreds of megabytes versus 2 or so), and a decent amount of fast RAM. 4 or 8MB on a 32-bit bus, versus 128KB or less on an 8 or 16 bit bus. The 486 had 16KB of on-die cache, which alone gave a huge performance boost over the traditional M68k and its contemporaries.

 

Your still a fan of shrumps by anychance? cuz your in luck! check this bad boy out!: http://www.old-games.ru/game/4214.html & http://www.old-games.ru/game/4739.html SNES don't got this

 

there were some really awesome games on dos back then and or course on snes, but snes was way cheaper than a capable pc would have been. other than of course something like a commodore Amiga 500 - 1200

 

So there WAS a Sega Genesis? :stupid:

Raptor: Call of the Shadows, Little Big Adventure, King's Quest series, Descent, Lemmings, Warcraft, Doom, Hexen, Realms of Chaos, Rayman, Transport Tycoon, Civilization, Secret of Monkey Island, Sim City 2000, Wing Commander series.. Yes, a lot of those were ported to the SNES but those versions were hardly as good. Personally, I think PC gaming was unmatched by consoles untill the Saturn and PSX came along.

 

I think the big different is that back in the days in japan SFC releases are push the consoles much forward.
PC or Amiga was also cool, but something complete different.

 

Nobody's mentioned the sound quality of MS-DOS PCs around that time, which was by far MS-DOS gaming's weakest point. ADLib was the most common in 1990 (though you'd be surprised how many PCs were beeper-only!) and sampled sound was not adopted widespread by buyers and games for another year or two (and at mono-GBA-mixing-quality at that.)

I'd say only 1992 or 1993 at earliest was when PCs had true competition in all areas (graphics/sound/framerate) at the same time. And it still certainly wasn't affordable.

 

This

 

I played more DOS games in the early-mid 90s than actual console games ( By a little bit ).

I played strategy games mostly. Master of Magic, Civilization, Colonization, X-COM series, Dune2, Syndicate, Warcraft 1 and more. DOS was the place to be for strategy gaming
I played other kinds of game too of course but those above I sank the most hours into.

 

Man I loved 90s DOS gaming. Cos in our house we never had a 16 bit console, we went straight from the NES to the N64.

I remember playing classics like the Doom games, Day of the Tentacle, the original Need for Speed (which looked gorgeous back in the day), The Lost Vikings, Zool, Jazz Jackrabbit, Quarantine, Syndicate, Theme Park, X-Wing, Tie-Fighter... the list goes on. And back then it was easy to have a large library of games... copying floppy to floppy was a breeze. Ahhh memories.

 

I still have my original Theme park CD-ROM. I just loved that one, there was actually a ton of machiavelous strategy involved in designing your theme park for maximum profit. I am tempted to give it a go again.