The N64 CPU was apparently a legitimate 64-bit CPU of sorts - had 64-bit registers, required data to be aligned on 64-bit boundaries, could address more than 2^32 bits of memory, etc... but it was always used in 32-bit mode.
Back in the day consoles really did have a huge leap in graphical quality thanks to the processor. Nes had the Z80 and Genesis had the 68000 which was used in the amiga and in arcade machines. So going from 8 bit to 16 bit was huge. I think thats why Turgo Grafix got left behind, it was running on the z80 which had been out for years. 8 bit and 16 bit were good ways to define the difference. Now the leap in graphics is not as huge and its all 32bit or 64 bit anyways. But what does Mega mean on the cart? Like the Neo Geo carts were 330 mega or Strider on genesis was 32 mega or whatever?
Megabit. The physical size. Some SMS game for example were 4-mega. that mean it had 4 mega bits total or 512 KB if you want to go by bytes.
Uh, the NES most certainly did NOT have a Z80. Neither did the Turbo Grafx 16. The NES had a custom 6502 CPU. The Turbo Grafx had a custom 65xx family CPU which ran quite fast. The Genesis contains both a Z80 and 68000 CPU. The Z80 was a sub-cpu intended for handling the task of audio in Genesis games while being the primary cpu when in Master System mode. Next the graphical quality didn't have a huge leap because of the processor. The processor didn't have anything to do with displaying graphics directly. The big leap was better technology allowed for better graphics chips. The NES when from a relatively simple PPU (their term for their graphics chip) to a feature rich PPU in the SNES. The SNES, Genesis, and Turbo Grafx 16 all has video chips that allowed for "4 bits per pixel" graphics. In other words graphical tiles used 4 bits allowing for 16 different colors, one of them being transparent. This standard lasted a long time actually. The reason the systems look different in this aspect is the SNES has a much richer total color palette than both TG16 and Genesis. I think it's 32 thousand colors versus Genesis with 512 total colors. And I think TG16 was similar to the Genesis. But that's not the whole story still! SNES could have up to 256 colors (approx) on screen at once. Genesis only 64. TG16 actually could display the most at 512 total at once. Moving on, "Mega" or "Megs" usually is a term for Megabits. What is a Megabit? Why it's one million bits approximately. So for each conversion, 128 Kilobytes is 1 Megabit. Mega Man 1 on NES was advertised as being ONE MEG. So when they say a game is an amazing 32 MEGA or Megs they mean that it's 4 Megabytes of ROM data. 8 bits to a byte, convert Megs to Bytes by dividing by 8 or for the reverse you multiply by 8. Obviously Megs sounds better as it's a bigger number.
The Jaguar had two 32 bit processing chips; one for sound and one for picture names tom and jerry. This was hogwash to a point to advertise as 64bit as you cant say a machine is that by adding the no.'s together. 32bit+32bit=64bit :/ thats why the N64 showed its true BIT % as at least Nintendo were honest at the time about their specs BITS meant something at the time as it was the amount of switches it could calculate at one time for the binary code so 16bit effectivley meant you could have 16 busses that potentially worked on a 2's compliment system So the value you could get out of 16bits was expadential crazy amount of extra information. I wont bother crunching no.'s here. Anywho it gets to a point I think it only goes to 64bit as you have windows 64bit to give an example.. maybe they can gpo further in future? thing that the no.'s created is high enough to bus the information around even with todays new consoles coming out.. so focus has now moved to the RAM and CPU type stuff.
I should have wiki'd the processors before I posted. This was a very educational post. Amazing the T16 could display the most colors! I remember wanting a Turbo Express back in the day. I could get one now but they supposedly have sound issues.
