Gulf Between Arcades and Consoles

[sliceofawesome]

The Famicom was released in 1983 and it was pretty much arcade quality at the time.

[Tina]

If any of you find yourself in Colorado Springs, you must, I mean must go here.....
http://www.manitouspringspennyarcade.com/
It is just a blast.
I worked there for two summers as a teen, we had so much fun. Looking at the old pinball machines, I am needing to hear that old knocker sound, just miss the sights and sounds.

[jon]

I'm referring mainly to the early 90s. And I loved seeing that MK3 machine there. I've been thinking about picking one up some day, although by the time I do the price my be insane. And they're outnumbered by Ultimate MK3 which I'm not interested in.

[Shapur]

There was a pretty big gap in 94 between arcades and home consoles but I'm not sure about singling out this time frame only. It was definitely just as big in the 80's with the NES being nowhere near as powerful as advanced arcades of the time. It continued right on until the arcade market shrunk to the point of not getting dedicated hardware anymore. I mean look at the Sega Model 3 vs Nintendo 64. There's a home console released the same year as an arcade and Sega's arcade machine makes the N64 look ridiculously bad. Of course the caveat is always you couldn't sell those arcade machines for $200-300 to consumers.

[jon]

In '94 the arcades had fully polygonal 3d games running at good frame rates. And at that time the home market was dominated by the SNES. And computer games were also significantly more advanced than consoles too. I was playing 3d sports games with dynasty modes by that time, and realistic Indy Car simulators.

[Wallyworld]

Dreamcast was not only as good as the arcade it was better. Ever play Soul Caliber on arcade its polygons are a mess. Dreamcast version of SC was crystal clear and it blew my mind on 9/9/99.

Genesis was better at arcade style games because it has a slightly faster processor (blast processing yay!). Lightening Force to me was the most impressive game of that generation. SNES was a great console just not at arcade style games. SNES had better sound, colors, and larger sprites. Not to mention its mode 7 trickery. I love both systems but for different reasons. Super Ghouls and ghosts was nice but suffered horrible slow down. If I had to pick one I'd pick the genny because I like it's arcade style games. Also their clam shell cases look great on my shelf.

[jon]

I completely agree, the Genesis I think was the better system. The SNES fanboys don't understand that there were certain genres that it sucked at. Sports games were a joke compared to the Genesis which in my opinion is one of the best sports games systems of all time. And the SNES couldn't handle fast paced action games, seeing it try to was a joke. It couldn't handle that many objects on screen at once, and because of that the games just felt empty. Compare that to the Genesis with it's blazing fast processor. And it really irritated me that the SNES just took over the market by 1995, and it was so inferior to the arcades, and the computers. It was ridiculous. I remember playing exciting 3d computer games and then playing the SNES and having to like lower my mindset it was a joke. Those years '94-'95, should've been so much better. Maybe if more money was put at the 3do and Jaguar, it was just pathetic how primitive the home market still was.