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

This topic seems a bit silly:

- If I didn't have a Mega Drive, I wouldn't have played Phantasy Star
- If I didn't have a SNES I wouldn't have played Secret of Mana
- If I didn't have a PC, I wouldn't have played Sierra or Lucasarts adventure games

Affordability and easy of use are critical in this discussion. Many PCs pre-Win95 used the PC speaker, or if you were a bit better off you had Ad-Lib of a similar low spec sound card. In 1994 we added a 2x CD-ROM with a Soundblaster 16 card to our 386 DX40, and it came in at a whopping $500. We then added 4mb of RAM, which set us back $250. Doing this meant we could play Doom with DOS loaded in full with the SB16 taking care of audio.

Gaming on the PC also meant learning how to modify your autoexec.bat and config.sys to kick in CD-ROM support, configure your audio card, bring in any device drivers for mouse or joystick support and play with memmaker to get your system memory in order for some titles. It was definitely a dark art.

But the above doesn't really count at the end of it - the games spoke for themselves. This also includes all those woeful arcade and console ports to PC and other home computers (check out Yakumo's Battle of the Ports for some history lessons!), and the comparatively woeful ports going the other way too.

 

True, a few titles did used alot of PC Speaker audio quality of the time & yeah having to config nearly everything yourself was a pain as well but the fact until we started getting FreeDOS & DOS Navigator installed on our PCs then things became a bit easier plus about the Joysticks, at least for one people could configure there own button layouts while with consoles you can't (no brainer) but the fact is we can use any PC gamepad we like while others could not And yes this topic does seem a bit silly (Because it was intend to be) but kinda think about the kind of titles/exclusives it had with the SNES quality look-alike games i'm basically trying to mention with which one had the better or comparable Jrpg types, Platformers, adventure, action, & Sports. But even still MS-DOS is technically PC least it doesn't hurt to give a sheer fun debate!

 

There were quite a few of the earlier DOS PC games that were pretty decent. Sound cards were just starting to take hold so that area was lacking until the games became standard with Adlib or Soundblaster support. Apogee really shined in bringing console Related platform and SHMUP games to the PC.

What about the 8 bit computer? The Atari 400/800, TI, Vic20 and especially the Commodore 64 had tons of games taking part in that "console war".

 

Very true, the sound cards in fact were still being used cuz a lot of people still was using the soundcards from the mid-late 1980's and a lot of users hadn't upgraded yet till during the mid 90's that in which many game makers started using SNES or arcadish like soundcards.

 

LOL I thought about this for years!

I got a digital Gravis gamepad a couple of years ago and played a lot of games on my 486 with it playing with the idea it was 1993 and the 486 was the no1 console. I just wanted to play games on the 486 with a joypad and it was a blast!

Doom was very playable with a joypad (as most other MS-DOS games was)! Highly recommended!.

 

Did you try connecting the PC to a CRT TV ?

 

Would you like for me to do a NES vs C64 or Atari 800 thread? Even though i strictly perfer a PC-8801 or MSX2 vs NES/Famicom thread instead

 

Yeah the idea just came to me, about the idea like if MS-Dos was considered highly as a gaming console during the era with the Sega Genesis & Super Nintendo with the Gamepad PC joysticks as like actual controllers made JUST for it. And while everyone kept saying what were the best JRPGs of the time like Final Fanasty 6 & Chrono Trigger, our DOS Jrpgs of all time would be this: http://www.old-games.ru/game/screenshots/4555.html (if it were localized & translated to the USA) plus the rest of the other Korean & Chinese RPGs exclusive to them! ;-)

 

Without the Genesis nintendo would have keep the Nes going for another generation...

As for the PC all I remember from those days (mind I wasn't even in elementary yet) is what a fucking pain in the ass was to get ANYTHING to work at all. Plug&play didnt even exist yet, PC were expensive as shit so competing with a Snes or any console would have required a miracle in cost reduction, and even then most PCs had shit for graphics hardware, I recall color screens and GUI weren't standard yet.

And dont get me started on those shit controllers with analog inputs: not only those never worked but the manufacturers were putting out any shitty incompatible layout they could think of, look at this shit:



And those werent the worst!


As for games, well there are a few jewels from the day, mainly games that couldn't be done on consoles or had to be severely cut down to fit the tight HW envelope like Syndicate. But as much as we like to bitch about DX now back then the lack of standard libraries meant that you rarely got the best experience, no matter how expensive your rig was

 

Well Yes without the genesis there wouldn't be no console war but to say SNES was a cheaper solution Maybe & no, also considering there was actually ONE GUI back then: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOS_Navigator surprisingly around early 90's (1991 to be exact) so yes Dos could provide a more easy solution of running games instead of using Dos Command lines ;-) though i can give you that gui system weren't very common to the public. Speaking of Joystick have you heard of "Gravis Pro Gamepad" series of controllers? i'm not what you had but i've heard many good things about those somewhat. P.S I know this is off-topic but, have you guys heard of or played "TWINS" before? Looks like a cool look-alike Super Nintendo game Exclusively for MS-DOS! here's the link if interested: http://www.old-games.ru/game/screenshots/3290.html

 

It's such a different time in gaming, I'd say you almost can't compare it to today. The times were so different and everyone today has such an "insider" knowledge compared to then due to the advent of the internet, it's astounding. It becomes clear instantly of why X game isn't on Y system, why a port doesn't work, or anything along those lines. Additionally, it couldn't be simpler for a developer to log into a social media account and speak directly with a single fan regarding a problem with a game, or sound off to 300,000+ about how the publisher pushed them to meet release, so that feature they touted was scrapped.

More in the vein of what you specifically asked though, if someone had developed a PC with a specific chipset specifically for gaming, with the goal of lowering cost enough to compete with SNES, I think they'd have flopped. By the time it would have released, the parts would have become outdated. Additionally since it would still be just a gaming focused PC that can play any DOS based game and not an X brand that can only play proprietary games, they wouldn't get the high licensing royalties that Nintendo received when companies published to their system.

 

I think if it would've competed well imo, the price wouldn't have mattered to me since theres many PC stores that a few can provide for a cheaper cost (depending) then again have you ever lately seen the huge massive library of DOS games plus able to upgrade your graphics card for PS1 or Sega Saturn styled games and those (sort of) yes no one doesn't wanna go through a long process of hooking things up to get stuff working finally. But if it's for that particular exclusive then, Why Not?! plus i see better games on DOS more than i see SNES games imo!

 

I had one, they are shitty controllers with horrible D-pads.

 

I remember how heavily they were promoted in game manuals at the time and even had their own controller settings in a lot of in-game menus. Good to know I wasn't missing out on much!

 

That's not true, actually. Windows 1.0 was released in '85, so it had already been around for a while. Before that there was Mac OS. Both Mac OS and Windows were heavily "inspired" by the work of Xerox PARC, which existed earlier than that.

 

And lets not forget DOSSHELL, which was even bundled with many versions of dos

 

Ahh okay, sorry about that but yeah i think i did read that a much earlier Windows OS did came around the mid 80's same with Mac OS PCs so your right about that i'd give you.

 

You know, when someone brought up DosNavigator I immediately remembered DOSSHELL on our IBM PS/2 that we got in 92. PC gaming back in the day, especially on that thing with its shitty MCA bus and lack of ISA, was a bitch. "Hey man, I got this old adlib card that I'm not using, you want it? Oh wait its ISA. No sound for you!!". Try being a 6-7 year old kid and learning how to configure DMAs and IRQs, what different filetypes were for, doing most stuff in command line etc., in the pre internet days and you'll know exactly why consoles were so much more popular for gaming. Windows 3.1 came on 6 floppy disks and the 4th one would corrupt itself if installed more than 3 or 4 times. Like many others at the time, we only ran windows when we had to run windows based software. Nobody in my immediate family knew shit about computers outside of basic DOS commands so it was up to me to figure it all out. Didn't stop me from gaming though. Had Wolfenstein when it was new, had to make a special boot disk in order to run Doom when it came out.


Man, I learned so much from screwing with that thing. Probably why I work as a programmer today.