As someone who has messed around making homebrew for both, I have to say the largest advantage the stock GBC has over the stock NES is the built-in Character RAM (the NES requires a decent mapper to make use of it). That said, while looking this up I found that there's a homebrew game called Magic Floor that uses the name tables as Character RAM, which is genius and I'd love to see a video on that.
NES cartridge has input pins for CIRAM A10, and CIRAM chip enable. These let the cartridge do mirroring mode selection. PPU A13 connects to CIRAM chip enable, so that nametables (memory range 2000+) are in internal RAM rather than on the cartridge. CIRAM A10 either connects to PPU A10 (horizontal scrolling), or PPU A11 (vertical scrolling). But you can instead connect CIRAM chip enable to always on, and CIRAM A10 to PPU A13. Then you get a single nametable, and the graphics are the same 64 tiles repeating (1KB repeated across 8KB address space).
@@tifforo1 Homebrewing is in a gray area of video game development. If it all of your owned works. It no hold bars. But taking other works. That when it get in the black area.
Both consoles were great and it goes to show, if a developer knew how to program for either unit, they could make outstanding games. I think you should continue this and go PS1 / PS2 - PSP / VIta.
NES has a definite resolution advantage but between overscan and bezels you're probably not going to see a lot of the edges on old CRTs - maybe somewhere around 240x220 or so? At least with GBC you could count on being able to see the whole thing. One other thing is the NES had tile attributes defined in 16x16 units vs 8x8 for the GBC, plus the GBC had more tiles and could do per-tile flipping, mirroring and priority. NES could technically provide some of those capabilities through mappers but there was very little of that happening in practice.
You're greatly exaggerating the overscan (which can be adjusted anyway in service menues or adjustment pots, so you're never actually forced to have overscan if you know how to adjust it). 224+ is usually visible on most factory set CRTs, horizontally it's more like 248px visible. (I pick up a lot of CRTs)
@@riggles "Around 240x220 or so" is a great exaggeration vs 248x224 visible? Does that count bezels? My recollection is that most TVs didn't show much if any of the glitchy pixels on the right or left you got from insufficient attribute wraparound, hence why it didn't really bother developers. I remember seeing it clearly on one TV once as a child (might have been poorly adjusted) and being surprised by it. I do know that game developers were very cautious not to put anything important particularly close to the left/right/bottom edges of the screen. So even if it might have been well visible on most or even all TVs for all intents and purposes there was a lot of dead space in the eyes of developers, that didn't apply to handhelds.
@Exophase At least with CRT's here that I pick up (28 inch, fairly nice models, typical 90's-2000's livingroom TV's) default has been that they'll have more than 224p visible. We also had RGB Scart 60Hz sync as mandatory in Sweden since the early 80s, so maybe things are different here because of that flexible format support and equipment with better video quality. In the 70's TV's would overscan way more (reportedly 192 visible out of 240 wasn't uncommon). So I guess it depends on how good of a CRT you had. Bezels doesn't cut into the image, the phosphor mask edge has a sizeable margin before the plastic bezel even on small 14" sets. During the PS1/Saturn/N64 era 240p was the norm, and developers started ignoring overscan more and more, in favor of better sets with less overscan out of the factory being more common in the mid-late 90's. Plenty of games fully utilize all those lines and CRT's would display most of it without adjustments. But there's also NES games that utilize the full 240p well without garbage too, the only thing you'd have to worry about really was HUD, there would be nice but non-crucial graphics in those areas. Arcade game developers didn't care at all and put HUD all the way into the 240p edges (or even did things like 256p 55Hz), since H/V size adjustments on arcade chassis was accessible right there for the operator, rather than being a service menu feature. Thankfully nowadays we can all adjust the H V sizes to our liking on CRT's, thanks to easy to access service manuals online.
One important advantage of the GB(C) over regular consoles is that it can delay pushing pixels to the screen. Sometimes there's delays because of changes in palettes and stuff within a line: the GB could pause a few cycles but a console sending signals to a CRT in real time couldn't.
Thank you, also arguably the tinting of the squares, sawtooth and triangle waves of the GB sound is much nicer. Chiptune artists will often pick GB over NES tracking, it's sounds amazing. Deep fat sound that the NES couldn't do with its limited range. Happy hippo area 4 on GBC is a good example of a great sounding retail game.
It's of pretty limited utility, though. All you can really do is selectively disable the left or right output of each of the four audio channels. The only way to get true stereo is with the square wave channels, where because you have two of them, you can dedicate one to left and one to right and now you can control them independently or use that ability for "smooth" panning. But if you do that, you're left with just the wave and noise channels for everything else, though the wave channel is pretty flexible since it can be used not for just PCM, but for simulating other types of waveforms like a square or triangle or sine or whatever.
This is fascinating. It's wild to think that there was an 8-bit system that was, at least for a little while, contemporary with the PS2, and while the GBC had a short life, it has a special place in my heart. I would actually be interested to see a similar comparison between the PS2 and 3DS. I'm still impressed to this day that Tales of the Abyss and Dragon Quest VIII are available mostly uncompromised on the handheld
I think the battle between the 8-bit NES and the 16-bit Sega Genesis was most fascinating. Especially because Nintendo held it's ground for two years while developing their next gen hardware.
This was a spectacularly interesting episode, and I was particularly pleased with the nods to new releases, homebrew development and even the demo scene. Thoroughly enjoyable, thank you so much for making this video! 👏🏻👏🏻💪🏻💪🏻
The thing about the audio is that the NES pulse waves can't go that far down into the bass notes, which is why most games use the triangle wave for bass. The GB(C) doesn't have that restriction, and it also has the waveform channel, so you hear a much greater variety of bass timbres. You can use the DPCM channel on the NES like the waveform channel on the GB, but it's harder to get it working. Also, I personally think the pulse waves on the NES have a nicer timbre than the ones on the GB, but I'm sure people will disagree on that. EDIT: I forgot to mention the Famicom expansion audio. With the VRC6 the Famicom 100% beats the GB.
@@ferreroman2913 I wonder if the majority of people will agree with that, or if they think the NES sounds better. It's definitely a matter of opinion, cause they are technically pretty similar.
I've noticed a difference too; it seems like the Game Boy sounds... "crunchier"? I think that's what that means? Almost more like a Commodore 64. Whereas the NES has more of a clean tone. I'd love to see someone dig into why that is.
I don't get why nobody ever talks about Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare on GBC. That to me was the most impressive title for the system since it combined the high colour mode as used in Fish Files but used it to display photorealistic backgrounds which, at a quick glance, don't look that far removed from the PS1 version of the same game. Of course close scrutiny shows massive differences and also the game has far fewer of those backgrounds to display from its 4MB cartridge. This was a large game for GBC to be sure (the same as Fish Files, Shantae or also the very impressive Cannon Fodder or Dragon's Lair), but obviously far from matching 2 PS1 discs.
I love your videos man - I've developed 3D engines for years, grew up with a C64 then an Amiga - I totally recognize your battle hardened understanding of the systems we love. It's an intellectual treat! you are the Fred Dibnah of retro computing - no nonsense Northern gaming!
Thanks! Glad I can talk the talk, not sure I can walk the walk. I can just about figure out other peoples assembly code, but I struggle to write my own! That's the first time I've been compared to Fred Dibnah, but I'll take it! I just need my own series on BBC2 now.
@@Sharopolis You're a Rosetta Stone. Never underestimate what you bring to the table. Besides, the beginning of wisdom is the ability to define your limits. And to teach others how to overcome their own. I'm saying this as someone, who can't even code BASIC. It took me years to realize an NES and a Master System (or a SNES and Genesis) were roughly running at the same processor speed. (I'm aware that's painfully oversimplified, and instruction types vary...) But you? You get people like me caught up on all this in seconds. Things I would struggle to explain, or even might get wrong, you made them all obvious. We need historians like you, because too much of gaming history is being written by fanboys who have no idea what they're talking about. (It's why sprite scaling is called a mode 7 effect, and the 2600 and the 5200 are supposedly the same generation of hardware. It's why the AVGN's 16-bit comparison is one of the most viewed videos on the subject, despite using a single misleading Nintendo advertisement as its single source.) I look forward to your next lesson.
This is very useful. I've been making some GBC games with the help of software GB Studio by Chris Maltby. However I was adjusting things as if the non-flicker limit was 8 sprites per scanline (I wasn't sure but assumed it was as the NES and didn't bother to check). Now I know I have two more.
Tyrannosaurus Tex had a little cheat: Background is vertically symmetrical. It's using the Tile Flip feature so the bottom half is a reflection of the top half. Only need to draw half of the screen, saving lots of CPU time. Toy Story racer is just pre-rendered video that is unaffected by the player's actions. Days of Thunder on the NES also did something similar.
@Sharopolis As a GBC emulator developer there is one thing I had to account for that I didn't realize was possible until I found examples. That is instead of having a cartridge with a sound enhancement chip (which the GBC does support as it has connectors for L and R speaker output to the cartridge) some games started manipulating the GBC hardware itself to play recorded music. What they would do is load a sample into the wav sample channel and then as soon as the sample finished it would swap for a new one. So they could use this to play recorded music directly on native hardware. Examples of this include "Pika-Chu!" on Pokemon Yellow, zombie moans on Resident Evil Gaiden and the king of it has to be the soundtrack for Little Nickey for GBC. For a direct example for Little Nicky look up the song "Little Nicky - Zany Bus". Great video as always! Long time watcher, first time commenter.
Great video, love old console content! As someone who's spent some time enthusing about the sound of both systems, famicom-only expansion chips aside, I would give the sound 'W' to the gameboy for two reasons. The 1bit PCM channel on the NES wasn't heavily utilized afaik (apart from link's iconic "ouch", the intro to Action 52, and some kick/snare samples) while the 4bit wave generator allowed for more variety in sounds overall. Additionally, though you wouldn't benefit from it unless playing with headphones on, the gameboy did support stereo sound output, adding another dimension to the sound capabilities.
something the GBP and GBC have over the NES that could be able to tip the scales is a modern project that connects the GB to WiFi through a seperate processor on the cartridge. this is technically possible on the NES but with some of the graphics limitations you wouldn't be able to display a live feed on the NES despite it being possible on GBP and GBC. the wifi cart was made by "There Oughta Be" and it can stream video to the GBP/GBC
One neat trick that I've seen in recent years on the GBC is that someone managed to get FMV to run on the console with 3 bit audio. Giving to a 144p video at a insane 30fps
Thanks so much for this video, this is exactly what I always wanted to know! One point to add perhaps: As you mentioned, graphically the GBC profited from much larger cartridge sizes. This was simply because ROM was far cheaper in the GBC times. This enabled impressive graphics like the Toy Story Racer game shown at 16:00. As far as I can tell, the impossibly detailed 3D track is not actually rendered on the GBC. Instead, they used a pre-rendered background video for each track which plays faster or slower depending on how fast you drive. This of course takes a lot of cartridge space. Also in many other games, like the Donkey Kong Country GBC port, the GBC had graphics which would have been not possible on the NES, not because the NES was not powerful enough, but because ROM was too expensive at the time. Even if the NES had a high color mode, it wouldn't be possible to include the pre-drawn backgrounds of The Fish Files (16:36) or the backgrounds of the (even more impressive?) Alone in the Dark GBC game. Additionally, some early NES games apparently looked bad partly because the developers weren't familiar with the hardware. :D The overworld of the first Zelda game comes to my mind. (On the GBC, Zelda Links Awakening or the Zelda Oracle games were way ahead in this regard, although they of course also profited from large cartridge sizes.) It would be cool to see "large cartridge" custom ROM versions of some classic NES games, especially the early ones. Imagine Zelda 1 with nice graphics from Link's Awakening DX. :)
The GB could absolutely handle extra sound chips. There is an unused AUDIO IN pin in the cartridge slot, that could theoretically be used with a chip mapped into ROM space in memory.
I would love to see you do more of these comparison videos. I think some of the more interesting ones would be Colecovision vs. Atari 5200, Atari 7800 vs. NES, TurboGrafx-16 vs. Sega Genesis/Mega Drive, Sega CD vs. Turbo CD vs. Jaguar CD, Game Gear vs. Lynx, and Saturn vs. PS1.
Akumajo Densetsu on the Famicom has the best NES music in my opinion (though the actual NES can't handle the extra in-cart sound channels the Famicom could). That said, I friggin love the Gameboy sound, and there is no shortage of great chip tunes on the old handheld. Surface of SR388 from Metroid II and Tal Tal Heights from Link's Awakening are two of my favorite GB songs. And games like Mario Land 2, Wario Land, and Pokemon just have stellar soundtracks all around.
Excellent video as always! One game that always used to be batted around at the time of the GBC was Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare. It didn't offer much really but the backgrounds used the change the palette on every line trick you show at 17:00.
I know I’m a little late to the party, but I wanted to add something about the sprite flickering. This was something that had to be programmed for. The NES would natively only display the first 8 sprites on a single line, after that they would just be invisible. What companies did was they would either shuffle the sprites around in memory to show each sprite on successive frames, or they would pick a priority sprite(such as the player) and cycle the rest. It’s actually a very nuanced solution to a major problem.
That Tyrannosaurus Tex game makes me want to see a Doom port, or at least Wolfenstien. Fascinating video, just the perfect amount of geekiness. Maybe compare the GBA with the SNES next
I had no idea the GBC was so powerful because I mostly played first-party games on it. Nintendo never seemed all that interested in making the most of the system. It's like it got spat out as a stop-gap while it finished up the GBA.
Yeah, you read my mind, that is sort of coming, but under a different title I think. I'll give you a sneak preview though, the GBA absolutely trounces the SNES.
@@RWL2012 yes, and resolution! and the games didn't have bright washed-out colours to try and compensate for Nintendo using a screen not visible to the human eye
I always assumed that portables were last gen consoles downsized to a portable format. I thought PSP was a pocket PS1, and Vita was a pocket PS2. Performance-wise it always felt like it, even though electronically, what I thought, wasn't even close.
The portable consoles from SEGA and NEC that you mentioned were not competitors to the Famicom or Game Boy (including the Color version). Firstly, these laptops went missing in their own way. For example, SEGA Nomad was eating batteries. Secondly, SEGA Momad was not a competitor, but SEGA Game Gear, including its larger sister console, the SEGA Master System. Here it’s not just a related console, but the SEGA Game Gear hardware has been reduced to the SEGA Master System, without being technically limited, as is the case with the Famicom and Game Boy (including the Color version).
It would be fun, but definitely not even close unless you count the SuperFX chip. GBA wins by miles. High power 32-bit ARM7 chip, with 32 bit multiplier, way more available colors, 96KB VRAM (to 64KB), almost 300KB RAM, and many other hardware goodies. Biggest downside is the lower resolution, which is what made ports from TV systems (SNES) play so poorly.
@@JAGtheTrekkieGEMINI1701 not at all, GBA is way more powerful than the SNES. GBA can do full textured 3d polygons without the need for extra hardware.
@@JAGtheTrekkieGEMINI1701 Probably because of the lower resolution and because developers washed out the colors to compensate for the dark screen. I watched a video from Modern Vintage Gamer a few weeks ago showing Tomb Raider running on the GBA.
I just started playing GBC on my 3Ds and I’m blown away by the retro feeling and games, is not as archaic as the NES but it still feels old yet beautiful pixel art I personally love it
Man...your content is absolutely mesmerizing. I can't stop watching it. Wait, did you just show a relatively smooth fps on the GBC? Crazy. Addendum- When Nintendo called it the GBC they weren't kidding. ;)
Regarding the number of colors the NES can display simultaneously and its graphical abilities in general, it's worth checking out the MXM-0 and MXM-1 mappers as well as the in-development Former Dawn project based on them.
One nice underappreciated aspect of the Game Boy [Color] is that it has enough video memory to scroll in any direction without the visual artifacts you can see in NES games like Super Mario Bros. 3.
2:37 the Nomad was North America-only though, unless some were being imported to the UK even back in its day? (I know quite a few have come over in the last decade or so, including mine). I wish Nintendo had done an equivalent handheld SNES. good video anyway, and some nice game examples.
I've always wondered this myself, and have always been too lazy to actually look into it, lol. This is an awesome breakdown - thank you once again for a fascinating lil' video, Sharopolis! EDIT: Oh and awesome - you showed off The Fish Files! I recently got a PowKiddy and was _desperately trying to remember the name_ of that GBC adventure game. I kept thinking, "Was it Feeble Files!?" but that's a different adventure game, and I just could not find it in the thousands of pre-installed games for the thing, lol. But I KNEW there was that _one_ LucasArts-looking adventure title for the GBC I finally wanted to try. Now I know! Thank you!
If i give you a GBA with games like need for speed underground 2, crazy taxy, James Bond 007 nightfire, driver 3, asterisk and obelisk, smashing drive It is more close to ps1 than SNES. Also GBA is the only platform i know where the fan ports are sometimes more ambitious than the official game releases just check out a tomb raider port: open lara also there are a proper 3D fps homebrew game. Maybe because for most games the GBA version was just a small side project, also gba released in 2001, DS released in 2004 so gba only have 3 year in the market.
It's very difficult as by the end of the GBC's life both programming techniques were better and rom sizes were far larger too. If you had more major publishers releasing games still on the NES at that point. I think the only thing that makes the GBC games objectivly better is the wider range of colours and the fact that everything is running in a smaller resolution so it looks like there is more detail on screen at first glance.
Yeah, no. That RAM size, improved DMA, and faster processor speed aren't at all minor. I get that you enjoy slowdown and sprite flicker - it's nostalgic, and it's not like you have to deal with the seizures. Plus, all that room for improved character animation? It's distracting to people who are used to instant 8-bit attack teleportation. It forces artists to work extra hours. So, technically, you're right. It's all subjective. But I had to strawman the hell out of you in order to add any meat to your shallow argument. Let's face it - it's not one of your better moments.
@@juststatedtheobvious9633 you need to chill out and not be so aggressive as I stopped paying attention to what you wrote with the start of your second paragraph. You may have some kind of valid point but you need to not act like someone who always considers himself right in the way you come across first.
@@freddiejohnson6137 If you confuse a wee bit of sarcasm for aggression that's your personality flaw. I'm sorry you couldn't handle the rough waters. You'll just have to miss out on the larger point being made. And if you keep making the same mistake, that's on you.
The Gameboy does actually have an audio input pin on the cartridge slot, but it was never utilized for external cart audio in commercial games. There are non-Nintendo music carts that take advantage of this pin. There is also a Doom cartridge made a few years back with an FPGA on the cart to do some graphics maths. I believe the GBC is still a better system.
The comparison I've always been interested in - The Atari Lynx vs the Genesis and SNES. While the Lynx has a very limited screen size, the specs and origin of the Lynx suggest something more like a handheld Amiga. Honestly, the biggest problems were the size of the device and having a launch library that was a mix of old Atari and Epyx computer games with some tech demos of the graphics hardware. I've always wondered if the system was made into a console how it would have fared. It would probably need to be given some extra video memory to account for TV screens. And maybe revising the way the carts load into RAM to save memory.
You can't compare MHz to MHz, you must compare bus cycle to bus cycle. A bus cycle on a Z80 takes 3 cycles (4 on an instruction fetch with and average of 3.3). A bus cycle on a 6502 only takes 1 (actually a half as the CPU only accesses the bus on PHI2 high). So to compare MHz to MHz you need to divide the Z80's MHz by about 3.3. So 8.38/3.3 = 2.54. This is still 42% faster than the 1.79. But if you take into account that hardly any title on the GBC would run at the 8.38MHz as this consumes too much power and drains the batteries so most run at 4.19MHz. So now if you now compare 4.19/3.3 = 1.257 the NES is now the one that is running 42% faster.
(11:20) Whoops, that says "Operation C NES" in the corner there, but Operation C is a Game Boy game. (16:34) And, The Fish Files is a Game Boy Color game, not an NES game.
Really impressive to see the "3D" racing games on the GBC. I was personally kinda disappointed with the mario kart release on the game boy advance, given how games like hot wheels stunt track challenge could actually manage 3D tracks and models, but nintendo's mario kart didn't.
Talking about colors. One thing that the GBC may have more colors, but it never was all that vibrant. Thanks to it's display. Vs the NES that was seen on a CRTs that was lot more dynamic in how it presents what is displayed.
Even before seeing this vid back in the 90’s I had always felt the OG Game Boy was more powerful than the NES, especially the audio. Absolutely adored the GB.
@@tarstarkusz Yep, I have couple Atari Lynx handhelds that I bought back the 90’s too and a couple years ago I had the McWill screen MODs done. So awesome
I understand that the Game Boy Color displays more information on the screen (colors on screen, backgrounds and sprites), but I doubt that's the case. Colors renditions of Super Mario Bros. Deluxe and Atlantic Adventures confirm this. And there should be many such examples.
This is actually the first time I heard that Sega had a handheld that was just a whole fun-sized Genesis. It must have been insanely expensive or extremely flawed to do that poorly in the market.
Looking at the size of these other handhelds, it's no wonder the GB, GBP and GBC handily outsold them all. Those Sega and whatnot systems are all gigantic and don't really fit into a pocket! Let alone the ridiculous amount of batteries they needed and how fast they were drained. Batteries were freaking expensive back in those days! Rechargeables were not a viable alternative yet, either. Nintendo was the only handheld manufacturer that placed their bets on a compact, light weight design, long runtime and affordable price being more important for a handheld console than processing power, state of the art graphics and a decent color screen and they were damn right, it turned out.
Well, flickering wasn't a hardware feature, rather a programmed feature. By default the 9th (and higher) sprite(s) on a scan line just doesn't get drawn.
It's worth considering how the different limitations intersect. Like you mention with the number of sprites; in this case the GBC's lower resolution actually helps it as the *relative* number of sprites available becomes much higher than on the NES. When it comes to colour, though, the lower screen resolution combined with it using the same 8x8 sized tiles as the NES means that a similarly proportioned character (in terms of screen space) is going to be made up of fewer 8x8 tiles. Many of the prettier NES games leveraged the necessity to construct larger objects of multiple smaller tiles by giving those tiles different palettes, allowing a character to use more than 3 colours (albeit with restrictions of where). The GBC in practice can't do that as often despite its otherwise greater colour cabailities, which results in many GBC games having very monochrome-looking characters in contrast to the backgrounds (or similar games on the NES).
Basically does the increased efficiency of the 6502 derivative in the NES make up for the 8x clock difference to the Z80 derivative in the GBC I'm going to say yes, based on main processor execution performance, the NES should be quicker per cycle. But the GBC has the distinct edge in main memory.
I'm actually fairly surprised, because I don't remember anything really seeming to push the envelope of the GBC's power, but that's because a lot of GBC games weren't actually GBC games at all but original Gameboy games that had color information that the original gameboy would just ignore. So in practice, the GBC felt much closer to the original Gameboy than its specs would really indicate.
I do wonder why no-one used a sound/music expander on a GB/GBC game since the capability was there with the direct sound pin on the cartridge interface
NES to Game Boy conversions. The Simpsons is one such conversion. The Simpsons for the NES is based on alien mutants trying to conquer Earth, while The Simpsons for the Game Boy is based on the an evil Summer camp. The graphics and game play are alike, but the plots are completely different.
I'm sure you've heard this before but MHz to MHz comparisons between 6502 and Z80 don't mean too much. The 6502 is generally more efficient with fewer cycles per instruction. So, roughly speaking, a 1.79 MHz 6502 would probably be closer to a 6-7 MHz Z80. The the 8 MHz of the GBC is not likely "twice as fast" as the NES's CPU.
So there are ups and down for both systems, I think the biggest reason why the NES has a downside is that since it has to fill more pixels. However, the NES is ancient compared to the GBC in terms of years on the market considering the hardware used was based on the Famicom which was hardware from 1983... Where the GBC was from 1998... more than a full decade later. Which really speaks well to the design of the Famicom's architecture.
A very, i mean VERY nice and interesting work !!! 👍😁 Next ... "Snes vs GBA" ? 😉 Or even PS1 vs GBA (if we consider the GBA version of OpenLara as a demake) 😲
Nice vid. My personal thoughts: It's likely unfair to compare the GBC to the NES in the way that the NES was made in the mid-late 1980's. GBC started out from a "black and white" foundation at the time - through the Gameboy and, later, in the mid to late 1990's - GameBoy Pocket. The GBC came out around the Nintendo 64 era, introducing a very new COLORED version of portable gameplay for Nintendo fans. I would like to see what would be more in line - in terms of graphics and power - to be better: SNES, GBC or GBA.
The "window layer" on GB is actually part of the background layer, that's why there's no transparency. Edit: also, transparency on consoles were not a thing until the SNES.
What does the picture resolution on TV give when connecting a Famicom to it? What we see is not a real image, but one stretched to the size of a CRT TV (after all, this so-called monitor is close to the Famicom in aspect ratio), and this is many times greater than the resolution of the Game Boy. So the Game Boy Color lost not to the Famicom itself in terms of picture resolution, but to the stretched image on TV.
The Game Boy (and by extension Game Boy Color) sound hardware is significantly better for music and sound effects just because of the four bit wave channel. You lose a triangle generator but honestly triangle generators aren't all that useful. The Game Boy can make music the NES can't touch.
The GBC being 15 years older than the NES is seriously lacking, Nintendo should have released the GBA in 1998, I think the same about the NEO GEO Pocket, another underpowered device for an otherwise overpowered 1990 console company nobody had. Comparing a 1983 console to anything released in 1998, and the console still beating it in many aspects say a lot about Nintendo and how this handheld is weak. To go even further, a few days back I compared the NES Classics and Famicom releases for the GBA, mostly poor ports and they have lower resolution, stretched assets. Super Mario Bros. on the GBA is a shame, really.
@@RWL2012 I didn't know the GBA was supposed to be more powerful even years before its release. To this day I wonder why SNK released a portable that wasn't more impressive than a Game Gear, not to mention Lynx (although only hardware-wise) and specially the Turbo and Nomad, years before it, the NEO GEO AES was a Ferrari of a console in 1990, why they bothered releasing a low key handheld in the late 90's is beyond me, same for GBC, really, the original GB is already underpowered for what it was, but at least, its software (Tetris and later Pokémon), alongside with long battery life and cheap carts were something feasible for its lifespan, but at 1998, when 128-bit consoles and GPUs already existed, it's ridiculous. Nintendo would probably be releasing something a little more powerful than the NDS from 2020 onwards if the PSP (a true revolutionary handheld) and later smartphones (now the global market leader in gaming by far) weren't a thing. See the Switch, was underpowered by 2017 standards.
I actually took part in a debate if the NES could recreate this unreleased title for the GBC. After watching your video, my definitive answer is no. th-cam.com/video/I98EyngXNso/w-d-xo.html It comes down to the CPU and registry tricks. Without that, something like RE1 in this form just wouldn't fly. You NEED sprite scaling and other tricks to make it work, plus the storage would completely nullify any NES Cartridge.
@@cmyk8964 Memory mappers where needed to boost the early NES Games to what we saw a towards the end of it's lifetime. You would need nothing short of the NES equivalent to the special effects chip to Reach the game boy color resident evil level. I'm not sure the NES even has the hardware interface for that. Edit: (The SNES was made VERY SPECIFICALLY to interface with expansion hardware inside the cartridges.)
Another factor that contributes to making the Gameboy color more powerful is the fact that the GBC's CPU isn't responsible for as much stuff (sound, for example). This allows the CPU to spend more of it's time on other things, essentially making it faster
I do think for better or worse the GBC was a stopgap before the inevitable GBA that was a true jump into better games overall. The GBC felt very overdue by the time it showed up in 98 or so. It only got a couple good years on the market before it was replaced by the GBA. And overall yeah it felt under utilized considering very few games truly took advantage of the bumped up specs.
As someone who has messed around making homebrew for both, I have to say the largest advantage the stock GBC has over the stock NES is the built-in Character RAM (the NES requires a decent mapper to make use of it). That said, while looking this up I found that there's a homebrew game called Magic Floor that uses the name tables as Character RAM, which is genius and I'd love to see a video on that.
Wow that's nuts!
How does it use name tables as character RAM?
NES cartridge has input pins for CIRAM A10, and CIRAM chip enable. These let the cartridge do mirroring mode selection. PPU A13 connects to CIRAM chip enable, so that nametables (memory range 2000+) are in internal RAM rather than on the cartridge. CIRAM A10 either connects to PPU A10 (horizontal scrolling), or PPU A11 (vertical scrolling). But you can instead connect CIRAM chip enable to always on, and CIRAM A10 to PPU A13. Then you get a single nametable, and the graphics are the same 64 tiles repeating (1KB repeated across 8KB address space).
The screen on the original Game Boy is cheap and kind of terrible, but even the original Game Boy has 4 times the memory of the NES.
@@tifforo1 Homebrewing is in a gray area of video game development. If it all of your owned works. It no hold bars. But taking other works. That when it get in the black area.
Both consoles were great and it goes to show, if a developer knew how to program for either unit, they could make outstanding games. I think you should continue this and go PS1 / PS2 - PSP / VIta.
I think DS vs N64 and OG 3DS vs Wii might be more interesting comparisons.
@@clashmanthethird id say the 3ds is closer in power to the gamecube than the wii
@@clashmanthethird yeah ds vs n64 but i imagine they are wildly different but I wanna see
PSP is way better than PS1 please...
NES has a definite resolution advantage but between overscan and bezels you're probably not going to see a lot of the edges on old CRTs - maybe somewhere around 240x220 or so? At least with GBC you could count on being able to see the whole thing.
One other thing is the NES had tile attributes defined in 16x16 units vs 8x8 for the GBC, plus the GBC had more tiles and could do per-tile flipping, mirroring and priority. NES could technically provide some of those capabilities through mappers but there was very little of that happening in practice.
Yes NES metatiles are (to me) very annoying to work with.
You're greatly exaggerating the overscan (which can be adjusted anyway in service menues or adjustment pots, so you're never actually forced to have overscan if you know how to adjust it).
224+ is usually visible on most factory set CRTs, horizontally it's more like 248px visible. (I pick up a lot of CRTs)
@@riggles "Around 240x220 or so" is a great exaggeration vs 248x224 visible? Does that count bezels?
My recollection is that most TVs didn't show much if any of the glitchy pixels on the right or left you got from insufficient attribute wraparound, hence why it didn't really bother developers. I remember seeing it clearly on one TV once as a child (might have been poorly adjusted) and being surprised by it.
I do know that game developers were very cautious not to put anything important particularly close to the left/right/bottom edges of the screen. So even if it might have been well visible on most or even all TVs for all intents and purposes there was a lot of dead space in the eyes of developers, that didn't apply to handhelds.
@Exophase At least with CRT's here that I pick up (28 inch, fairly nice models, typical 90's-2000's livingroom TV's) default has been that they'll have more than 224p visible. We also had RGB Scart 60Hz sync as mandatory in Sweden since the early 80s, so maybe things are different here because of that flexible format support and equipment with better video quality. In the 70's TV's would overscan way more (reportedly 192 visible out of 240 wasn't uncommon).
So I guess it depends on how good of a CRT you had.
Bezels doesn't cut into the image, the phosphor mask edge has a sizeable margin before the plastic bezel even on small 14" sets.
During the PS1/Saturn/N64 era 240p was the norm, and developers started ignoring overscan more and more, in favor of better sets with less overscan out of the factory being more common in the mid-late 90's. Plenty of games fully utilize all those lines and CRT's would display most of it without adjustments. But there's also NES games that utilize the full 240p well without garbage too, the only thing you'd have to worry about really was HUD, there would be nice but non-crucial graphics in those areas.
Arcade game developers didn't care at all and put HUD all the way into the 240p edges (or even did things like 256p 55Hz), since H/V size adjustments on arcade chassis was accessible right there for the operator, rather than being a service menu feature.
Thankfully nowadays we can all adjust the H V sizes to our liking on CRT's, thanks to easy to access service manuals online.
A few improvements in memory, paging, speed, bus width, and fabrication can make such a difference. Pity it hadn't been out earlier, say 93 or 94.
Really great video! Would love to see other handheld vs. console comparisons (SNES vs. GBA, DS vs. N64, 3DS vs. GCN etc.)
DS vs GCN, and 3DS vs Wii seems like a fairer comparison to me, but maybe I'm wrong
@@sparkwave2 nahhhh gcn destroys the ds
New 3ds vs wii, switch vs wiiU
@@nutzeeer We know the switch takes that dub
@@sparkwave2
Nah, DS is closer to being a portable N64. And the 3DS is closer to GameCube power.
One important advantage of the GB(C) over regular consoles is that it can delay pushing pixels to the screen. Sometimes there's delays because of changes in palettes and stuff within a line: the GB could pause a few cycles but a console sending signals to a CRT in real time couldn't.
Gameboy had Stereo sound via the headphone jack. NES was Mono only.
Thank you, also arguably the tinting of the squares, sawtooth and triangle waves of the GB sound is much nicer. Chiptune artists will often pick GB over NES tracking, it's sounds amazing. Deep fat sound that the NES couldn't do with its limited range.
Happy hippo area 4 on GBC is a good example of a great sounding retail game.
It's of pretty limited utility, though. All you can really do is selectively disable the left or right output of each of the four audio channels. The only way to get true stereo is with the square wave channels, where because you have two of them, you can dedicate one to left and one to right and now you can control them independently or use that ability for "smooth" panning. But if you do that, you're left with just the wave and noise channels for everything else, though the wave channel is pretty flexible since it can be used not for just PCM, but for simulating other types of waveforms like a square or triangle or sine or whatever.
This is fascinating. It's wild to think that there was an 8-bit system that was, at least for a little while, contemporary with the PS2, and while the GBC had a short life, it has a special place in my heart.
I would actually be interested to see a similar comparison between the PS2 and 3DS. I'm still impressed to this day that Tales of the Abyss and Dragon Quest VIII are available mostly uncompromised on the handheld
I think the battle between the 8-bit NES and the 16-bit Sega Genesis was most fascinating. Especially because Nintendo held it's ground for two years while developing their next gen hardware.
This was a spectacularly interesting episode, and I was particularly pleased with the nods to new releases, homebrew development and even the demo scene.
Thoroughly enjoyable, thank you so much for making this video! 👏🏻👏🏻💪🏻💪🏻
The thing about the audio is that the NES pulse waves can't go that far down into the bass notes, which is why most games use the triangle wave for bass. The GB(C) doesn't have that restriction, and it also has the waveform channel, so you hear a much greater variety of bass timbres. You can use the DPCM channel on the NES like the waveform channel on the GB, but it's harder to get it working.
Also, I personally think the pulse waves on the NES have a nicer timbre than the ones on the GB, but I'm sure people will disagree on that.
EDIT: I forgot to mention the Famicom expansion audio. With the VRC6 the Famicom 100% beats the GB.
the sound is way better!
@@ferreroman2913 On which console?
@@rzeka the Gameboy
@@ferreroman2913 I wonder if the majority of people will agree with that, or if they think the NES sounds better. It's definitely a matter of opinion, cause they are technically pretty similar.
I've noticed a difference too; it seems like the Game Boy sounds... "crunchier"? I think that's what that means? Almost more like a Commodore 64. Whereas the NES has more of a clean tone. I'd love to see someone dig into why that is.
I don't get why nobody ever talks about Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare on GBC. That to me was the most impressive title for the system since it combined the high colour mode as used in Fish Files but used it to display photorealistic backgrounds which, at a quick glance, don't look that far removed from the PS1 version of the same game. Of course close scrutiny shows massive differences and also the game has far fewer of those backgrounds to display from its 4MB cartridge. This was a large game for GBC to be sure (the same as Fish Files, Shantae or also the very impressive Cannon Fodder or Dragon's Lair), but obviously far from matching 2 PS1 discs.
I love your videos man - I've developed 3D engines for years, grew up with a C64 then an Amiga - I totally recognize your battle hardened understanding of the systems we love. It's an intellectual treat! you are the Fred Dibnah of retro computing - no nonsense Northern gaming!
Thanks! Glad I can talk the talk, not sure I can walk the walk. I can just about figure out other peoples assembly code, but I struggle to write my own!
That's the first time I've been compared to Fred Dibnah, but I'll take it! I just need my own series on BBC2 now.
@@Sharopolis
You're a Rosetta Stone.
Never underestimate what you bring to the table.
Besides, the beginning of wisdom is the ability to define your limits. And to teach others how to overcome their own.
I'm saying this as someone, who can't even code BASIC. It took me years to realize an NES and a Master System (or a SNES and Genesis) were roughly running at the same processor speed. (I'm aware that's painfully oversimplified, and instruction types vary...)
But you? You get people like me caught up on all this in seconds. Things I would struggle to explain, or even might get wrong, you made them all obvious.
We need historians like you, because too much of gaming history is being written by fanboys who have no idea what they're talking about. (It's why sprite scaling is called a mode 7 effect, and the 2600 and the 5200 are supposedly the same generation of hardware. It's why the AVGN's 16-bit comparison is one of the most viewed videos on the subject, despite using a single misleading Nintendo advertisement as its single source.)
I look forward to your next lesson.
This is very useful. I've been making some GBC games with the help of software GB Studio by Chris Maltby. However I was adjusting things as if the non-flicker limit was 8 sprites per scanline (I wasn't sure but assumed it was as the NES and didn't bother to check). Now I know I have two more.
Tyrannosaurus Tex had a little cheat: Background is vertically symmetrical. It's using the Tile Flip feature so the bottom half is a reflection of the top half. Only need to draw half of the screen, saving lots of CPU time. Toy Story racer is just pre-rendered video that is unaffected by the player's actions. Days of Thunder on the NES also did something similar.
@Sharopolis As a GBC emulator developer there is one thing I had to account for that I didn't realize was possible until I found examples. That is instead of having a cartridge with a sound enhancement chip (which the GBC does support as it has connectors for L and R speaker output to the cartridge) some games started manipulating the GBC hardware itself to play recorded music. What they would do is load a sample into the wav sample channel and then as soon as the sample finished it would swap for a new one. So they could use this to play recorded music directly on native hardware. Examples of this include "Pika-Chu!" on Pokemon Yellow, zombie moans on Resident Evil Gaiden and the king of it has to be the soundtrack for Little Nickey for GBC. For a direct example for Little Nicky look up the song "Little Nicky - Zany Bus". Great video as always! Long time watcher, first time commenter.
Little Nicky - Zany Bus:
th-cam.com/video/K3TX35mTkDI/w-d-xo.html
Pokemon Yellow - PikaChu!:
th-cam.com/video/SwfYT1Llm0Y/w-d-xo.html
Resident Evil Gaiden - Zombie Moans:
th-cam.com/video/BfZQzCJ9UBs/w-d-xo.html
Great video, love old console content! As someone who's spent some time enthusing about the sound of both systems, famicom-only expansion chips aside, I would give the sound 'W' to the gameboy for two reasons. The 1bit PCM channel on the NES wasn't heavily utilized afaik (apart from link's iconic "ouch", the intro to Action 52, and some kick/snare samples) while the 4bit wave generator allowed for more variety in sounds overall. Additionally, though you wouldn't benefit from it unless playing with headphones on, the gameboy did support stereo sound output, adding another dimension to the sound capabilities.
something the GBP and GBC have over the NES that could be able to tip the scales is a modern project that connects the GB to WiFi through a seperate processor on the cartridge. this is technically possible on the NES but with some of the graphics limitations you wouldn't be able to display a live feed on the NES despite it being possible on GBP and GBC. the wifi cart was made by "There Oughta Be" and it can stream video to the GBP/GBC
One neat trick that I've seen in recent years on the GBC is that someone managed to get FMV to run on the console with 3 bit audio. Giving to a 144p video at a insane 30fps
I was able to find a video with chiptune music, but not digitized audio. Does the demo have a name?
@@pokepress here it is
th-cam.com/video/iDd_aqpLf5Q/w-d-xo.html
@@SirScallywagger Something Nerdy's 'MXM-1'
Thanks so much for this video, this is exactly what I always wanted to know!
One point to add perhaps: As you mentioned, graphically the GBC profited from much larger cartridge sizes. This was simply because ROM was far cheaper in the GBC times. This enabled impressive graphics like the Toy Story Racer game shown at 16:00. As far as I can tell, the impossibly detailed 3D track is not actually rendered on the GBC. Instead, they used a pre-rendered background video for each track which plays faster or slower depending on how fast you drive. This of course takes a lot of cartridge space.
Also in many other games, like the Donkey Kong Country GBC port, the GBC had graphics which would have been not possible on the NES, not because the NES was not powerful enough, but because ROM was too expensive at the time. Even if the NES had a high color mode, it wouldn't be possible to include the pre-drawn backgrounds of The Fish Files (16:36) or the backgrounds of the (even more impressive?) Alone in the Dark GBC game.
Additionally, some early NES games apparently looked bad partly because the developers weren't familiar with the hardware. :D The overworld of the first Zelda game comes to my mind. (On the GBC, Zelda Links Awakening or the Zelda Oracle games were way ahead in this regard, although they of course also profited from large cartridge sizes.)
It would be cool to see "large cartridge" custom ROM versions of some classic NES games, especially the early ones. Imagine Zelda 1 with nice graphics from Link's Awakening DX. :)
The GB could absolutely handle extra sound chips. There is an unused AUDIO IN pin in the cartridge slot, that could theoretically be used with a chip mapped into ROM space in memory.
I think they added that with the GBA
Imagine if it was possible to mod a GBC to have high quality sound
I would love to see you do more of these comparison videos. I think some of the more interesting ones would be Colecovision vs. Atari 5200, Atari 7800 vs. NES, TurboGrafx-16 vs. Sega Genesis/Mega Drive, Sega CD vs. Turbo CD vs. Jaguar CD, Game Gear vs. Lynx, and Saturn vs. PS1.
"Nothing on the GBC ever sounded as good as Recca on the NES"
Hearing that comment made me look up the Robocop title theme on GB!
I had the same thought.
Akumajo Densetsu on the Famicom has the best NES music in my opinion (though the actual NES can't handle the extra in-cart sound channels the Famicom could). That said, I friggin love the Gameboy sound, and there is no shortage of great chip tunes on the old handheld. Surface of SR388 from Metroid II and Tal Tal Heights from Link's Awakening are two of my favorite GB songs. And games like Mario Land 2, Wario Land, and Pokemon just have stellar soundtracks all around.
Excellent video as always! One game that always used to be batted around at the time of the GBC was Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare. It didn't offer much really but the backgrounds used the change the palette on every line trick you show at 17:00.
I know I’m a little late to the party, but I wanted to add something about the sprite flickering. This was something that had to be programmed for. The NES would natively only display the first 8 sprites on a single line, after that they would just be invisible. What companies did was they would either shuffle the sprites around in memory to show each sprite on successive frames, or they would pick a priority sprite(such as the player) and cycle the rest. It’s actually a very nuanced solution to a major problem.
That Tyrannosaurus Tex game makes me want to see a Doom port, or at least Wolfenstien. Fascinating video, just the perfect amount of geekiness. Maybe compare the GBA with the SNES next
Commander keen 3d would be a cool game to see on the gbc.
I had no idea the GBC was so powerful because I mostly played first-party games on it. Nintendo never seemed all that interested in making the most of the system. It's like it got spat out as a stop-gap while it finished up the GBA.
Now I'm just waiting for the inevitable SNES vs GBA version of this
Yeah, you read my mind, that is sort of coming, but under a different title I think. I'll give you a sneak preview though, the GBA absolutely trounces the SNES.
@@Sharopolis apart from the sound :P
@@RWL2012 yes, and resolution!
and the games didn't have bright washed-out colours to try and compensate for Nintendo using a screen not visible to the human eye
@@googleboughtmee good points!
I always assumed that portables were last gen consoles downsized to a portable format. I thought PSP was a pocket PS1, and Vita was a pocket PS2. Performance-wise it always felt like it, even though electronically, what I thought, wasn't even close.
PSP is definitely closer to PS2 than PS1, and Vita is definitely closer to PS3 than PS2
Loving your videos!! Eagerly awaiting for the G&W part 2 to drop!
I'm working on it
I always love videos like this, great stuff!
Gbc did a real dragon's lair port. It wins by default
only because the ROM size was massive compared to NES, and that's solely due to timing.
@@binguloid That can said about a lot of games/consoles in general. 5th gen consoles especially.
The portable consoles from SEGA and NEC that you mentioned were not competitors to the Famicom or Game Boy (including the Color version).
Firstly, these laptops went missing in their own way. For example, SEGA Nomad was eating batteries.
Secondly, SEGA Momad was not a competitor, but SEGA Game Gear, including its larger sister console, the SEGA Master System. Here it’s not just a related console, but the SEGA Game Gear hardware has been reduced to the SEGA Master System, without being technically limited, as is the case with the Famicom and Game Boy (including the Color version).
Thanks for this. I think GBA vs SNES would be an interesting comparison
SNES wins
It would be fun, but definitely not even close unless you count the SuperFX chip. GBA wins by miles. High power 32-bit ARM7 chip, with 32 bit multiplier, way more available colors, 96KB VRAM (to 64KB), almost 300KB RAM, and many other hardware goodies. Biggest downside is the lower resolution, which is what made ports from TV systems (SNES) play so poorly.
@@JAGtheTrekkieGEMINI1701 not at all, GBA is way more powerful than the SNES. GBA can do full textured 3d polygons without the need for extra hardware.
@@fandangobrandango7864 Then Tell me why GBA Games Look worse in generell
@@JAGtheTrekkieGEMINI1701 Probably because of the lower resolution and because developers washed out the colors to compensate for the dark screen. I watched a video from Modern Vintage Gamer a few weeks ago showing Tomb Raider running on the GBA.
I just started playing GBC on my 3Ds and I’m blown away by the retro feeling and games, is not as archaic as the NES but it still feels old yet beautiful pixel art I personally love it
Well done! Thanks for doing this comparison, this was fun to watch.
Man...your content is absolutely mesmerizing. I can't stop watching it. Wait, did you just show a relatively smooth fps on the GBC? Crazy.
Addendum- When Nintendo called it the GBC they weren't kidding. ;)
Regarding the number of colors the NES can display simultaneously and its graphical abilities in general, it's worth checking out the MXM-0 and MXM-1 mappers as well as the in-development Former Dawn project based on them.
One nice underappreciated aspect of the Game Boy [Color] is that it has enough video memory to scroll in any direction without the visual artifacts you can see in NES games like Super Mario Bros. 3.
This is an awesome channel. I can't understand why it doesn't have more subscribers.
At the same time I wonder how as many as 22"K" people found "Sharopolis" :P
2:37 the Nomad was North America-only though, unless some were being imported to the UK even back in its day? (I know quite a few have come over in the last decade or so, including mine). I wish Nintendo had done an equivalent handheld SNES.
good video anyway, and some nice game examples.
That's a good point, I'm not sure any made it over here back then.
The gbc has stereo sound options if you use earphones which in my opinion makes the gbc the winner in this category
I've always wondered this myself, and have always been too lazy to actually look into it, lol. This is an awesome breakdown - thank you once again for a fascinating lil' video, Sharopolis!
EDIT: Oh and awesome - you showed off The Fish Files! I recently got a PowKiddy and was _desperately trying to remember the name_ of that GBC adventure game. I kept thinking, "Was it Feeble Files!?" but that's a different adventure game, and I just could not find it in the thousands of pre-installed games for the thing, lol. But I KNEW there was that _one_ LucasArts-looking adventure title for the GBC I finally wanted to try. Now I know! Thank you!
The handhelds have always been equivalent to the previous gen console for Nintendo in terms of overall power.
GBC=NES
GBA=SNES
DS=N64
3DS=GameCube
If i give you a GBA with games like need for speed underground 2, crazy taxy, James Bond 007 nightfire, driver 3, asterisk and obelisk, smashing drive
It is more close to ps1 than SNES.
Also GBA is the only platform i know where the fan ports are sometimes more ambitious than the official game releases just check out a tomb raider port: open lara also there are a proper 3D fps homebrew game. Maybe because for most games the GBA version was just a small side project, also gba released in 2001, DS released in 2004 so gba only have 3 year in the market.
@@Tofu3435 The GBA didn't completely die off when the DS launched tho. In fact, it lived up all the way untill ±2006,2007
It's very difficult as by the end of the GBC's life both programming techniques were better and rom sizes were far larger too. If you had more major publishers releasing games still on the NES at that point. I think the only thing that makes the GBC games objectivly better is the wider range of colours and the fact that everything is running in a smaller resolution so it looks like there is more detail on screen at first glance.
Yeah, no. That RAM size, improved DMA, and faster processor speed aren't at all minor.
I get that you enjoy slowdown and sprite flicker - it's nostalgic, and it's not like you have to deal with the seizures. Plus, all that room for improved character animation? It's distracting to people who are used to instant 8-bit attack teleportation. It forces artists to work extra hours.
So, technically, you're right. It's all subjective.
But I had to strawman the hell out of you in order to add any meat to your shallow argument. Let's face it - it's not one of your better moments.
@@juststatedtheobvious9633 calm down
@@juststatedtheobvious9633 you need to chill out and not be so aggressive as I stopped paying attention to what you wrote with the start of your second paragraph.
You may have some kind of valid point but you need to not act like someone who always considers himself right in the way you come across first.
@@freddiejohnson6137
If you confuse a wee bit of sarcasm for aggression that's your personality flaw.
I'm sorry you couldn't handle the rough waters. You'll just have to miss out on the larger point being made.
And if you keep making the same mistake, that's on you.
@@freddiejohnson6137 Chill, snowflake. he did not offend you.
little mistake at 16:38 it says the fish files are for NES but the game is for gbc.
thank you so much for making these videos. really entertaining!
I’m surprised you didn’t show the Capcom port of Dragon’s Lair. That still blows my mind every time I see it.
I nearly put that in, but I'm going to do anther GBC video which will feature it.
@@Sharopolis love your content man, keep it up.
I'm a Sega Genesis gamer but I had the nes console if I had to choose GBC and NES I'm going for the NES
The Gameboy does actually have an audio input pin on the cartridge slot, but it was never utilized for external cart audio in commercial games. There are non-Nintendo music carts that take advantage of this pin. There is also a Doom cartridge made a few years back with an FPGA on the cart to do some graphics maths. I believe the GBC is still a better system.
Well I stand corrected, thanks for that. I just assumed that was the case, I should have checked.
@06:25 -
Damn... thank you.. I have been searching for the name of this game for a long time.
The comparison I've always been interested in - The Atari Lynx vs the Genesis and SNES. While the Lynx has a very limited screen size, the specs and origin of the Lynx suggest something more like a handheld Amiga.
Honestly, the biggest problems were the size of the device and having a launch library that was a mix of old Atari and Epyx computer games with some tech demos of the graphics hardware.
I've always wondered if the system was made into a console how it would have fared. It would probably need to be given some extra video memory to account for TV screens. And maybe revising the way the carts load into RAM to save memory.
You can't compare MHz to MHz, you must compare bus cycle to bus cycle. A bus cycle on a Z80 takes 3 cycles (4 on an instruction fetch with and average of 3.3). A bus cycle on a 6502 only takes 1 (actually a half as the CPU only accesses the bus on PHI2 high). So to compare MHz to MHz you need to divide the Z80's MHz by about 3.3. So 8.38/3.3 = 2.54. This is still 42% faster than the 1.79. But if you take into account that hardly any title on the GBC would run at the 8.38MHz as this consumes too much power and drains the batteries so most run at 4.19MHz. So now if you now compare 4.19/3.3 = 1.257 the NES is now the one that is running 42% faster.
So even within the clear cartridge games, most only take advantage of the extra RAM and VRAM and still run the CPU at the slower speed?
"The GBC can do things the NES simply can't."
_Nintendoes what Nintendon't._
This channel is way, way underrated in terms of your subs. You deserve a lot more than you currently have and should be hitting that 100k mark by now.
Thanks! I'm 1/3 of the way there.
(11:20) Whoops, that says "Operation C NES" in the corner there, but Operation C is a Game Boy game.
(16:34) And, The Fish Files is a Game Boy Color game, not an NES game.
Whoops indeed! Sorry about that!
Really impressive to see the "3D" racing games on the GBC. I was personally kinda disappointed with the mario kart release on the game boy advance, given how games like hot wheels stunt track challenge could actually manage 3D tracks and models, but nintendo's mario kart didn't.
Talking about colors. One thing that the GBC may have more colors, but it never was all that vibrant. Thanks to it's display. Vs the NES that was seen on a CRTs that was lot more dynamic in how it presents what is displayed.
Even before seeing this vid back in the 90’s I had always felt the OG Game Boy was more powerful than the NES, especially the audio. Absolutely adored the GB.
You should hear the Lynx.
@@tarstarkusz Yep, I have couple Atari Lynx handhelds that I bought back the 90’s too and a couple years ago I had the McWill screen MODs done. So awesome
Yes, GBC vs. Game Gear please! Echoes of NES vs. Master System there...
I understand that the Game Boy Color displays more information on the screen (colors on screen, backgrounds and sprites), but I doubt that's the case. Colors renditions of Super Mario Bros. Deluxe and Atlantic Adventures confirm this. And there should be many such examples.
This is actually the first time I heard that Sega had a handheld that was just a whole fun-sized Genesis. It must have been insanely expensive or extremely flawed to do that poorly in the market.
The Nomad also came out long after the Genesis was relevant.
One big flaw was its terrible battery life
Looking at the size of these other handhelds, it's no wonder the GB, GBP and GBC handily outsold them all. Those Sega and whatnot systems are all gigantic and don't really fit into a pocket!
Let alone the ridiculous amount of batteries they needed and how fast they were drained. Batteries were freaking expensive back in those days! Rechargeables were not a viable alternative yet, either.
Nintendo was the only handheld manufacturer that placed their bets on a compact, light weight design, long runtime and affordable price being more important for a handheld console than processing power, state of the art graphics and a decent color screen and they were damn right, it turned out.
🤔🤔🤔🤔 Comparisions are always interesting! And... brings a lot of viewers to the channel. At least basing on my small experiences... Well done video!
Good like to see more handheld vs console comparison such as GBA vs SNES, NDS vs N64, 3DS vs Wii, PSP vs PS2, PSV vs PS3, Game Gear vs Master System
Well, flickering wasn't a hardware feature, rather a programmed feature. By default the 9th (and higher) sprite(s) on a scan line just doesn't get drawn.
16:20 this was funnily fmv for the tracks.
5:48 Then there were so-called hicolor mode.
You are refreshing man. I hope the vibes are just right. Stay up love the content
Love those tail-based graphics. So many tails!
?
It's worth considering how the different limitations intersect. Like you mention with the number of sprites; in this case the GBC's lower resolution actually helps it as the *relative* number of sprites available becomes much higher than on the NES.
When it comes to colour, though, the lower screen resolution combined with it using the same 8x8 sized tiles as the NES means that a similarly proportioned character (in terms of screen space) is going to be made up of fewer 8x8 tiles. Many of the prettier NES games leveraged the necessity to construct larger objects of multiple smaller tiles by giving those tiles different palettes, allowing a character to use more than 3 colours (albeit with restrictions of where).
The GBC in practice can't do that as often despite its otherwise greater colour cabailities, which results in many GBC games having very monochrome-looking characters in contrast to the backgrounds (or similar games on the NES).
I always wondered why the GBC only showed half of the screen at a time, thanks for explaining it to me.
Basically does the increased efficiency of the 6502 derivative in the NES make up for the 8x clock difference to the Z80 derivative in the GBC
I'm going to say yes, based on main processor execution performance, the NES should be quicker per cycle. But the GBC has the distinct edge in main memory.
Apparently, with an enhancement chip, the GBC could do Wolfenstein 3D via homebrew.
You just won a subscriber for life. I learned a lot about system hardware thanks to your videos.
How do you have so much knowledge?
Never knew GBC was such a beast. Cool video as always
I'm actually fairly surprised, because I don't remember anything really seeming to push the envelope of the GBC's power, but that's because a lot of GBC games weren't actually GBC games at all but original Gameboy games that had color information that the original gameboy would just ignore. So in practice, the GBC felt much closer to the original Gameboy than its specs would really indicate.
I do wonder why no-one used a sound/music expander on a GB/GBC game since the capability was there with the direct sound pin on the cartridge interface
NES to Game Boy conversions. The Simpsons is one such conversion. The Simpsons for the NES is based on alien mutants trying to conquer Earth, while The Simpsons for the Game Boy is based on the an evil Summer camp. The graphics and game play are alike, but the plots are completely different.
I'm playing the Pokemon Yellow port for the NES, and man if this was Pokemon Crystal and a bit more polished this would be great
I'm sure you've heard this before but MHz to MHz comparisons between 6502 and Z80 don't mean too much. The 6502 is generally more efficient with fewer cycles per instruction. So, roughly speaking, a 1.79 MHz 6502 would probably be closer to a 6-7 MHz Z80. The the 8 MHz of the GBC is not likely "twice as fast" as the NES's CPU.
So there are ups and down for both systems, I think the biggest reason why the NES has a downside is that since it has to fill more pixels.
However, the NES is ancient compared to the GBC in terms of years on the market considering the hardware used was based on the Famicom which was hardware from 1983...
Where the GBC was from 1998... more than a full decade later. Which really speaks well to the design of the Famicom's architecture.
A very, i mean VERY nice and interesting work !!! 👍😁
Next ... "Snes vs GBA" ? 😉
Or even PS1 vs GBA (if we consider the GBA version of OpenLara as a demake) 😲
Yeah, I'm working on a GBA video now.
@@Sharopolis
th-cam.com/video/3WAOxKOmR90/w-d-xo.html 👍😊
Nice vid.
My personal thoughts: It's likely unfair to compare the GBC to the NES in the way that the NES was made in the mid-late 1980's. GBC started out from a "black and white" foundation at the time - through the Gameboy and, later, in the mid to late 1990's - GameBoy Pocket. The GBC came out around the Nintendo 64 era, introducing a very new COLORED version of portable gameplay for Nintendo fans.
I would like to see what would be more in line - in terms of graphics and power - to be better: SNES, GBC or GBA.
Great video full of interesting facts. I always liked the GBC and have owned 3. Never owned a NES as I was a Sega player back in those days
Yeah. I think the GBA was already finished by 1998 but the success of Pokemon (and lack of games in development) pushed the release back
With bank controllers and coding tricks each is capable of doing some amazing stuff.
12:20 GBC also has stereo
The "window layer" on GB is actually part of the background layer, that's why there's no transparency.
Edit: also, transparency on consoles were not a thing until the SNES.
You credited the NES with 4 directional scrolling. That was mostly incorrect for the comparison.
What does the picture resolution on TV give when connecting a Famicom to it? What we see is not a real image, but one stretched to the size of a CRT TV (after all, this so-called monitor is close to the Famicom in aspect ratio), and this is many times greater than the resolution of the Game Boy. So the Game Boy Color lost not to the Famicom itself in terms of picture resolution, but to the stretched image on TV.
I remember buying my Gameboy Colour in 1998 cos I was nostalgic for my original Gameboy I had sold 3 years before.
The Game Boy (and by extension Game Boy Color) sound hardware is significantly better for music and sound effects just because of the four bit wave channel. You lose a triangle generator but honestly triangle generators aren't all that useful. The Game Boy can make music the NES can't touch.
You also lose a whole sample channel, and I personally like the NES noise better.
The GBC being 15 years older than the NES is seriously lacking, Nintendo should have released the GBA in 1998, I think the same about the NEO GEO Pocket, another underpowered device for an otherwise overpowered 1990 console company nobody had. Comparing a 1983 console to anything released in 1998, and the console still beating it in many aspects say a lot about Nintendo and how this handheld is weak. To go even further, a few days back I compared the NES Classics and Famicom releases for the GBA, mostly poor ports and they have lower resolution, stretched assets. Super Mario Bros. on the GBA is a shame, really.
I think in 1997 the GBA was planned to run at a ridiculous 160MHz, but the final design released in 2001 ended up running at just 17MHz.
@@RWL2012 I didn't know the GBA was supposed to be more powerful even years before its release. To this day I wonder why SNK released a portable that wasn't more impressive than a Game Gear, not to mention Lynx (although only hardware-wise) and specially the Turbo and Nomad, years before it, the NEO GEO AES was a Ferrari of a console in 1990, why they bothered releasing a low key handheld in the late 90's is beyond me, same for GBC, really, the original GB is already underpowered for what it was, but at least, its software (Tetris and later Pokémon), alongside with long battery life and cheap carts were something feasible for its lifespan, but at 1998, when 128-bit consoles and GPUs already existed, it's ridiculous. Nintendo would probably be releasing something a little more powerful than the NDS from 2020 onwards if the PSP (a true revolutionary handheld) and later smartphones (now the global market leader in gaming by far) weren't a thing. See the Switch, was underpowered by 2017 standards.
god i love recca so much, always get hyped by that ost
13:45 why the hell they uer dithering on the walls ?! What happened with that huge 15bit color palette?
I actually took part in a debate if the NES could recreate this unreleased title for the GBC. After watching your video, my definitive answer is no.
th-cam.com/video/I98EyngXNso/w-d-xo.html
It comes down to the CPU and registry tricks. Without that, something like RE1 in this form just wouldn't fly. You NEED sprite scaling and other tricks to make it work, plus the storage would completely nullify any NES Cartridge.
Not even with memory mappers?
@@cmyk8964 Memory mappers where needed to boost the early NES Games to what we saw a towards the end of it's lifetime. You would need nothing short of the NES equivalent to the special effects chip to Reach the game boy color resident evil level. I'm not sure the NES even has the hardware interface for that. Edit: (The SNES was made VERY SPECIFICALLY to interface with expansion hardware inside the cartridges.)
Another factor that contributes to making the Gameboy color more powerful is the fact that the GBC's CPU isn't responsible for as much stuff (sound, for example). This allows the CPU to spend more of it's time on other things, essentially making it faster
the NES's CPU does the sound in parallel to everything else.
@@binguloid really? How does it do that?
@@kimgkomg There are separate bits on the CPU's die dedicated to sound; The sound chip is embedded in the processor.
I do think for better or worse the GBC was a stopgap before the inevitable GBA that was a true jump into better games overall.
The GBC felt very overdue by the time it showed up in 98 or so. It only got a couple good years on the market before it was replaced by the GBA.
And overall yeah it felt under utilized considering very few games truly took advantage of the bumped up specs.
Gbc is have sega vibes, more darker,, but more fascinating to play! Nes is to colorful, but the sound is bringing nostalgic!
Another very informative and entertaining video!
Enjoyed that, not played many Game Boy Color games but it certainly does add something