super mario advance 4: - world selector and you can move between all the maps without reset cleared levels - e-reader levels, are awesome, but hard -a minigame extra in the main menu -minigames in the map have minor changes
@@gabnrami I don't think so, considering all the other SNES games ported to GBA doing an outstanding work they could have modified the sprites accordingly
I love how you separated the sound by left and right. It's brilliant! 😂 Had me confused at first, but I love how you allowed both to play at the same time.
Only reason they “blasted” it up was the console still had no light so they of course blasted the color up significantly. But it’s still a wonderful hand held that I still cherish, it got me through some tough times.
@@ReVita. on my trip out to Oregon that console was my savior, taking the train from NJ to Oregon I played it non stop with my over head light on and I was lucky enough to have the magnifier and light. Lord of the Rings The Two Towers and SMB 2 were mainstay on hat trip.
@@rayfincham1595 Man the GBA really saved us. Just 4 buttons and a D-pad. I almost forgot about the magnifier and light that you could attach to the top of the console. Looked like an antenna. Sunk hours on Super Mario Kart and a Spider-Man/Venom game!
GBA is amazing to this day and doesnt really age with time as the colorful 2D artstyle for its games have held up really well. I still have mine from when I got it in the year 2000. People of today can relive the good games of the past in a compact and portable package
@@25aces hm so how do the games fare on the original no backlight systems? do they look better with or without the backlight color saturation wise? gotta imagine dkc doesn't look as bad as it does backlit as it does on the original gba.
because of the shitty screen of the first GBA (the wide one) on real hardware they should look much better, well on the original GBA model, I'd bet on the collapsible GBA they look like crap too
Thank you. That's exactly how I got into these types of videos and wanted to make my own. I have a hacked SNES Classic and part of the fun is just to constantly discover new games to add it to the Classic.
I'm curious how they compare when played on the intended devices. As many have mentioned, the GBA had no backlight so the games were compensating for that, but the SNES was played on blurry CRT TVs, which made the pixelation mostly disappear and allowed for some gradients and transparency effects you can't see on a modern screen.
Turn your computer or phone screens brightness down to about 5-10% and it gives you an idea of what it looks like off a gba screen. It also shows why GBA brightened and saturated the colors on their snes ports
@@Gameprojordan Yeah, no, that can't come close to emulating the utter darkness of an original GBA screen. Any modern device screen is still visible at lowest brightness in total darkness due to some level of backlight that is always on.. For original Game Boy and GBA, if you are in the dark you don't see ANYTHING. Not even comparable. The only way to know how shitty it was is to get an original GBA and try it. Warning: it REALLY sucks. Hope you have a lamp positioned directly above your Gameboy, or you ain't seein' shit. LOL.
Most games look better on their original release but I appreciate some of the features a lot of the GBA rereleases had. Rock N Roll Racing allows you to save your game. Donkey Kong Country 3 has a whole new soundtrack and more levels. Doom and Wolfenstein are closer to the MSDos originals. And then there's stuff like Mortal Kombat Advance which is just awful.
But the replacement soundtrack for DKC 3 isn't a FEATURE; it was a necessity to accommodate the GBA's garbage speakers and lack of a sound chip. Changing the soundtrack to a game is a downgrade becuz its going to make people unhappy.
@@X2011racer Oh, she must've just barely missed DKC3 GBA, cuz it came out before Kameo. But also, it makes more sense to have someone else compose the new soundtrack. It would be way too disheartening to have to throw out all your hard work, or have to ruin it to make it not catch the GBA on fire (as the rumor? goes).
Wow, I never knew there were this many SNES ports! I remember play A Link to the Past on GBA as a kid and thinking it was an original GBA game! I didn't find out until years later that it's a port. I'm actually playing through the original version now. It's all come full circle.
Outside of the contrast issues, from what I've seen, the GBA version is actually better, it updates the translation and script to reflect the Zelda series and language better
@Hamikon I can put up with it, but would rather not. The field of view increase is the biggest reason I prefer the SNES version. Also Ocarina of Time has aged pretty badly. Windwaker is pretty good besides being too short, and the triforce-finding quest, and yes; I know the Wii U version shortened that segment.
The gba ports of many of these look good tbh, the lighter color can be made darker by messing with the TV settings if playing on a Gameboy player, it's also nice having the option to switch between portable and home console
Except for all the times *noticeably* less colors are used on the GBA, especially when colors are so bright and washed out that it loses many graphical details. Of course, some GBA games are far worse about these things than others. Then throw in the fact the resolution is almost always much smaller and limited/zoomed-in, there's *a lot* that can't be compensated for.
It's cause almost every game is oversaturated on the GBA to account for playing on unlit/front-lit screens. They look great on actual GBA systems but I don't like them on backlit screens.
Great comparison video. I feel like time and again, the main thing the GBA version seemed to struggle with when compares to SNES is the sound department. I think something that the GBA and the Sega Genesis have in common is that it's *possible* to get amazing sound and music out of both devices, but some inept or lazy programmers who either didn't know how or didn't feel like putting in the effort, and some really rough soundtracks and sound effects were often the result.
The lack of contrast in the GBA games is what stands out to me the most. The GBA screen was so dark that developers often dialed the contrast up to 11 to compensate. Playing on an emulator without adjusting the gamma -- as we see here -- isn't a good look for these games. Also, GBA sprites often appear stretched because CRT pixels were shorter than they were wide and developers accounted for this back then, but many didn't correct for it in the GBA versions.
This is a reupload, as I made some editing mistakes in the version that I uploaded first (wrong footage with wrong games). That of course couldn't stay up, so I had to fix and render again. Anyway, let me know if you like this video and if you want to see more like it.
This is an amazing video! The side by side comparison helps so much for those of us trying to decide between the snes or gba release of the 16bit classics. All in just 8 minutes. Thank you.
when I was a kid I had metroid fusion, it was my first real experience with a metroid game and I loved it. years later I finally played super metroid thanks to emulation. if super metroid had been ported to the gba and I played that instead of fusion, I probably would have loved it even more.
Some of these ports are surprising, in the sense that they don't really seem like games that would've been successful enough on the SNES to be worth porting in the first place.
@@CaptRobau I hope you do, this was a really well done video. I would be interested in seeing this got other consoles. There is a TH-cam channel (I'm sure you know) that compares console to console ports. But one video per game. I like how you did 48 in one video. Just impressive. Thanks for the entertainment while waiting on my winter tires swap.
During the mid 2010s in college, Ive been buying these classics to experience them in their entirety for the first time (all GBA version, it was a little cheaper btw). And now we’ve gotten the NES and SNES Minis in recent years, as well as the Switch NES/SNES apps, and I love it.
If you have a rev 1/V1 NSwitch you could easily (in comparison) and safely (relatively in comparison to new Switches) mod it to play those classic games on even better emulators
I think Gba games look brighter and lesser contrast to compensate for no backlight/frontlight in the original gba. Such a shame cuz they look identical otherwise
Correct, that's the reason. 3 primary aspects inferior on GBA ports: Lowered/limited resolution causing the 'zoomed in' look, the simplified/brighter/washed-out colors sometimes cause loss in the graphical details themselves, and most of the time the sound is *vastly* lower quality. Fortunately it's not always a total loss, since some games throw in some extra features on the GBA.
Next time you do these kinds of videos, I think it would be better to switch audio between the videos instead of playing them both at the same time. It's more pleasant, and it's easier to compare them. An example would be to look at the comparisons from the channel, silenig. That channel does a perfect job.
This just confirms to me that if only the GBA had the same resolution as the SNES and a back light so they didn't convert all the graphics into washed-out and often garish versions of the originals, it really would have been the ultimate "SNES" console" basically. They could have put pretty much every SNES game onto it perfectly replicated and even improved in many ways, like that version of Doom for example, and fixed a lot of the issue in the originals like the slowdown that many SNES games suffered. I mean, technically it's leagues beyond the SNES in almost every aspect. But, what we really got was usually kinda ugly versions of seminal all the SNES and slightly zoomed in so you saw less of game view, which was almost always a negative. Don't get me wrong, I loved my GBA SP. But what could have been....
"if only the GBA had the same resolution as the SNES and a back light so they didn't convert all the graphics into washed-out and often garish versions of the originals" Do you want it to vacuum up batteries? There were no affordable rechargeable batteries back then.
When GBA was new it never occurred to me the screen ratio was different and the games were being cropped… So clear to see here, thanks for this great vid
I imagine it's been mentioned since there's a good 500 comments on the vid, but I am mildly amused by how the SMB3/SMAdv4 screens/audios were swapped around seemingly by accident. Caught my attention! Also good choice on the ToP clip being the *INDIGNATION!* line, that one's a BELTER
In my opinion SNES versions have better colours, better contrast, clean image and better audio than GBA versions (listened with an audio headset), but GBA may have better translation and a brighter image. But in fact, the games are better on SNES.
I wish when they did the port they kept the game the same. It’s throwing me off how Donkey Kong Country 2 is different. From the menu to the music, the colors, basically everything. If the GBA is in fact more capable than the SNES then why change the game so much? Why not just improve on the visuals or just keep the game the same? I have to say I definitely prefer the original to many of the ports.
Fascinating comparison. In general the rule of thumb seems to be that the GBA versions ramp up the color, brightness and contrast as well as changing up the color pallete here and there and zooming in the aspect ratio (presumably to be more easily visible on the handheld screen), but there are one or two interesting exemptions. Donkey Kong Country GBA, in fact, seems to have widened the aspect ratio from the SNES version, so there is more visible on the screen at any one time and all tge sprites are appropriately a little smaller.
Games appear more zoomed in on the Game Boy Advance since it has a lower screen resolution, especially vertically. SNES is 256*224, GBA is 240*160. In terms of color, the original Game Boy Advance had no backlight (VERY dark screen) and was somewhat desaturated, so games were made brighter and more saturated to accommodate for the screen. The Donkey Kong Country ports appear more zoomed out, since the sprites were re-rendered at a smaller size.
I know this is outside the scope for this video, but I would also be interested in seeing Mega Drive to GBA comparisons - there were some good ones like Phantasy Star II, and some really really bad ones like Sonic the Hedgehog.
Not a very good comparison, the snes games need scanlines and the gba needs the dot lcd shader. Like they NEED them to look correct. Sometimes instead of single pixel you end up with something that is glowing, shaded, or transparent. It's so important.
Yeah just alittle more powerfull the gba had ssx tricky wich is a ps2 game sure the gba version is slow but i am shocked that any ps2 game could make it on the gba
@@michael-johnbrown2881 I used to game on an Amstrad CPC 464 (yeah, I'm old). When you see a port of an arcade game on that, it's a little like PS2 to GBA. Not that bad, though.
@Neil Metcalfe No. The SNES doesn't even come close in raw speed or horsepower. And the SNES has weird weaknesses, like only being able to use two sprite tile sizes per screen and only accessing the VRAM during a VBlank. And that's just the start of the list. There's no way you're running Gunstar Superheroes on an SNES. The GBA can also run two mode 7 style layers at the same time. And display 4096 colors. But none of that matters, because the GBA shipped without a backlight, so the games mostly look washed out. And the resolution is lower, meaning most games couldn't afford to show off how large their sprites could be, without impacting gameplay. Then there's the sound issue... So, basically, the cpu destroys the SNES in every way, except the SNES still has better versions of SNES games.
I'm surprised that while you included european based games such as The Smurfs, you forgot another by the same publisher, for Asterix: SNES: Asterix & Obelix ( 1995 ) GBA: Asterix: Bash them all! ( 2002 ) as part of a 2 in 1 cartridge.
7:14 the footage are swapped, I'm sure I noticed that part. but now I can see the difference between Mario all stars and Super Mario advance games. Those are my favorite childhood games I played since I was young playing it on a Old GBA SP or something.
You forgot International Superstar Soccer (the 2002 game, without 'Advance' in the title). It is a port of International Superstar Soccer Deluxe for the SNES.
I played the gba ports because in most cases the gameplay had nice little tweaks, extra content and improved translations, but the sound left a lot to be desired
Thanks. I get it. A SNES on the go is a pretty nice thing to have, even if the quality itself can be lacking at times. Kind of like the Switch. Docked you can play it 1080p and with higher FPS. But there's just something special about playing Mario or Zelda on the go.
I understand the lower resolution, but I am not a big fan of the high contrast. I suppose it's because the original GBA had no back light. NIce comparison video.
Technically the sprites are not bigger in the other games. They are the same resolution as on SNES. The total resolution of the GBA screen is lower so you end up with a cropped image. DKC was able to resize the sprites without losing too much graphic quality because of the style of graphics they used. You couldn't really rescale Mario without messing up what he looks like.
Muy buenas conversiones, me impresiona el Upgrade en algunos casos y en otros únicamente es una subida en la saturación del color o brillo pero en general está perfecto
Never been a fan of portable gaming, a lot of these ports are decent, but the majority suffer from early GBA non-backlite problem for which a lot of developers had to washout colors and raise brightness to remedy that. We can deal with aspect ratio change but colors and contrast is a game changer, at least visually. Some of the GBA ports suffer from severe FPS drops and that was also an issue.
GBA is great don’t get me wrong and I really enjoy it and the awesome part is it has extra features for previous games that were on the SNES and additional unlockables But? SNES for the win because it has the right lighting, pixels, shaders, perfect contrast and the older TVs takes advantage of this than modern HD TVs nowadays...the feeling of a cartridge in your hands is nostalgic in 2021 instruction manuals were thicc!!! That word also didn’t exist in the 90’s hehe...but I do remember dweeb and radical, but no one uses those words anymore God I feel old
If you lower the tv contrast+lower the gamma these gba ports are better. The only drawback is the sound and some games cluttered the hud to fill the smaller screen
7:14 Just noticed that in the SNES position, it screens the GBA version and in the GBA position, it screens the SNES version ... They're swapped each other
This is exactly why I'm one of the very few people who loves the front-lid GBA SP AGS-001 screen. Yes, the backlit screens are technically superior, but almost every single GBA games has been designed for an unlit screen and so they end up looking too oversaturated on backlit screens. The AGS-001 isn't without its flaws, but games on it look as it was intended.
Well said, although a game like Donkey Kong country 3 on the gba looks much better with the backlit screen (dare I say I prefer the gba port over the snes?)Gba games did start looking a lot better from 2005 and forward since they didn’t need to deal with developing games to accommodate the dark screen anymore
some games definitely handled brightening the graphics better than others; the image looks outright blown out for the unbacklit GBA screen in some of these games. :S
I would assume the reason a lot of these GBA ports are so much brighter is because the original advance didn't had a backlit screen and the devs wanted to adjust for that
Some people complain that many SNES ports on GBA have a zoomed-in screen as compared to their SNES originals, calling it 'screen crunch' or the like. But what they need to understand that these consoles, even though similar when it comes to capablities, have very different construction. GBA is a handheld console and as such, uses a small built-it in screen. SNES, on the other hand, is a home console, which can have resolution as large as a TV screen is. It's not surprise that display of GBA games need to be closed-up because if you tried to pay them in original resolution of SNES games, you would hardly see anything or screen, it would just be very small. Of course, not all SNES ports are zoomed-in but this is the reason why majority of them is.
Most GBA ports retained the original SNES assets resolution but as a result you could only see a subsection of what would've been an original full-screen image (notice how there's up-down scrolling in the RPGs on GBA advance that isn't there on the SNES.) Kinda like the old pan-and-scan VHS releases of movies were edited for TV screens. I do notice that Contra III appears to have been redrawn to retain the original screen ratio at a lower resolution. Also the Donkey Kong Country games have either been downscaled, or possibly re-rendered at a lower resolution from the original 3D art, for a similar effect. It doesn't look nearly as good on GBA, but it's interesting to see side-by-side.
SO.MUCH.SCREEN.CRUNCHING! Weirdly enough, the Mario games didn't have that problem compared to the other platformers that got ported on the GBA. Another case of developers needing to take cues from Nintendo but screw themselves over at in the end lol.
The ports of SNES games to GBA are not bad, but most are stretched or cut because of the screen and the colors are not good compared to the original, so it would be better to reprogram the sprites and configure the colors to be more similar to of the SNES and not make it so clear that it seems that the game is erased when moving some characters into a part of the scenario that is clear.
Everyone's talking about the higher contrast due to no back-light, but if you look closely the camera is slightly more zoomed in on the GBA versions too, likely due to it not quite being able to process the same draw distance as the SNES.
@@DerpDerp3001 That's not the reason at all. It's the resolution of the screen. Snes is 320x240. GBA is 240x160. The majority of games just crop the right, bottom and top a bit and went with that. The Donkey Kong Country games went the extra mile and rescaled everything down so you don't lose parts of the screen. You lose details on the sprites but it helps a lot with levels that require fast reflexes like the mine cart levels.
it's too bad the GBA version was the version of tales of fantasia to see a western release (yes, I know there was the IOS port, but we don't like to talk about it).
What do you think is the best SNES port on the GBA?
Which is my favorite to play? Super Mario Advance 4: Super Mario Bros. 3 eReader Edition
Which is the most impressive to me, technology-wise? Doom.
super mario advance 4:
- world selector and you can move between all the maps without reset cleared levels
- e-reader levels, are awesome, but hard
-a minigame extra in the main menu
-minigames in the map have minor changes
super mario advance 4
well, play them on snes if you can, i say.
Yoshi island
I love how the audio for the SNES is on the left ear and the GBA is on the right.
your face is on the right.
@@gilbert6181 I grew up with it so the one on the right actually looks better to me.
Most of the Capcom and Square Enix conversions on the GBA were actually pretty good.
except for Megaman & Bass, that thing was awful due to the zoom in
@@DaedalosC9 it was the only way due to smaller resolution…
@@gabnrami I don't think so, considering all the other SNES games ported to GBA doing an outstanding work they could have modified the sprites accordingly
I love how you separated the sound by left and right. It's brilliant! 😂 Had me confused at first, but I love how you allowed both to play at the same time.
But that makes it hard to hear each one very well, you just hear both half-assedly.
@@luminous6969
It's perfect with headphones. Just take one off your ear and you only hear one version.
@@Adventist1997 btw how he made it? That's cool just curious
@@jojoera2648
By changing the audio from mono to stereo. But making one side low and the other high or normal volume.
When people say that the Switch is a port machine, remember that handhelds have always been port machines.
Like a port of the Wii U?
adayinforever yea but I think they update the Wii U ports little and then throw it on switch
@@lestgo7950 yes
@@aaron_aj_knight_95 there was also the Sega Nomad, which was literally a portable Genesis
@@aaron_aj_knight_95 no. It was a portable Master System. The *Nomad* was a portable Genesis.
Only reason they “blasted” it up was the console still had no light so they of course blasted the color up significantly. But it’s still a wonderful hand held that I still cherish, it got me through some tough times.
Sitting next to the window on car trips to light up that good ol GBA screen
@@ReVita. on my trip out to Oregon that console was my savior, taking the train from NJ to Oregon I played it non stop with my over head light on and I was lucky enough to have the magnifier and light. Lord of the Rings The Two Towers and SMB 2 were mainstay on hat trip.
@@rayfincham1595 Man the GBA really saved us. Just 4 buttons and a D-pad. I almost forgot about the magnifier and light that you could attach to the top of the console. Looked like an antenna. Sunk hours on Super Mario Kart and a Spider-Man/Venom game!
GBA is amazing to this day and doesnt really age with time as the colorful 2D artstyle for its games have held up really well. I still have mine from when I got it in the year 2000. People of today can relive the good games of the past in a compact and portable package
SMB3 GBA had a workaround wherein slotting that thing in a Game Boy Player had the palettes be much closer to what All-Stars did.
I never noticed how much the gba seams to blast up the contrast on so many ports
This is likely because the GBA originally had no backlight.
@@25aces hm so how do the games fare on the original no backlight systems? do they look better with or without the backlight color saturation wise? gotta imagine dkc doesn't look as bad as it does backlit as it does on the original gba.
They don't. The video looks like this because of how the gameplay was captured. GBA games don't look so "washed out" in reality.
because of the shitty screen of the first GBA (the wide one)
on real hardware they should look much better, well on the original GBA model, I'd bet on the collapsible GBA they look like crap too
@@25aces No shit sherlock
7:15 these are switched, gba on the left lol
Lool ikr
7:13 - SMB3's screens got inverted somehow. As in, GBA Advanced version on left, SNES on right as supposedly SNES left, GBA right.
Good eye, I was going to point this out as well. All the info is still on the correct sides, just not the gameplay itself.
Ah yes the iconic over saturation of the GBA graphics
all cause of the terrible LCD
i love it
@@NeoTechni and lack of backlight on the original mode meaning they went for high contrasting color palettes.
It looked fine on an actual GBA SP screen, with the brightness turned down to an appropriate level.
It was necessary for you can see graphics in a LCD without light
Most of the GBA games looks like zoomed and simplified version of SNES games.
wow, the SNES games look so much better
Not all of them to be honest, the Mario games for an example I’d prefer on the OG hardware.
no
I was about to say the opposite
hi laowhy
Yeah, but back in the day I never noticed, aside from dkc1. They played just as well.
Great video, really cool and informative. Well done dude and thank you. Might use this to make a collection on my EZ Flash Omega!
Thank you. That's exactly how I got into these types of videos and wanted to make my own. I have a hacked SNES Classic and part of the fun is just to constantly discover new games to add it to the Classic.
Indeed guys great video I like gba cuz it does 8 bit nes 16 bit snes and 32bit games now like tomb raider
Now that is how you make a games list. This video is proper. Nice job.
I'm curious how they compare when played on the intended devices. As many have mentioned, the GBA had no backlight so the games were compensating for that, but the SNES was played on blurry CRT TVs, which made the pixelation mostly disappear and allowed for some gradients and transparency effects you can't see on a modern screen.
Turn your computer or phone screens brightness down to about 5-10% and it gives you an idea of what it looks like off a gba screen. It also shows why GBA brightened and saturated the colors on their snes ports
@@Gameprojordan Yeah, no, that can't come close to emulating the utter darkness of an original GBA screen. Any modern device screen is still visible at lowest brightness in total darkness due to some level of backlight that is always on.. For original Game Boy and GBA, if you are in the dark you don't see ANYTHING. Not even comparable.
The only way to know how shitty it was is to get an original GBA and try it. Warning: it REALLY sucks. Hope you have a lamp positioned directly above your Gameboy, or you ain't seein' shit. LOL.
Most games look better on their original release but I appreciate some of the features a lot of the GBA rereleases had.
Rock N Roll Racing allows you to save your game.
Donkey Kong Country 3 has a whole new soundtrack and more levels.
Doom and Wolfenstein are closer to the MSDos originals.
And then there's stuff like Mortal Kombat Advance which is just awful.
But the replacement soundtrack for DKC 3 isn't a FEATURE; it was a necessity to accommodate the GBA's garbage speakers and lack of a sound chip. Changing the soundtrack to a game is a downgrade becuz its going to make people unhappy.
@@Schwarzorn That, and the composer for DKC3 had left Rare, so David Wise returned for the GBA version.
@@X2011racer Oh, she must've just barely missed DKC3 GBA, cuz it came out before Kameo. But also, it makes more sense to have someone else compose the new soundtrack. It would be way too disheartening to have to throw out all your hard work, or have to ruin it to make it not catch the GBA on fire (as the rumor? goes).
IIRC Doom on the GBA wasn’t ported over from the SNES version, but instead from the Atari Jaguar version of all things
@@yoymate6316 that jaguar code was the basis for most of the console ports too
Wow, I never knew there were this many SNES ports! I remember play A Link to the Past on GBA as a kid and thinking it was an original GBA game! I didn't find out until years later that it's a port. I'm actually playing through the original version now. It's all come full circle.
Outside of the contrast issues, from what I've seen, the GBA version is actually better, it updates the translation and script to reflect the Zelda series and language better
I played the SNES version first, but I grew up on the GBA version.
@@godofthecripples1237 Lower field of view and link's annoying grunt every time he swings his sword make the GBA version worse in my opinion.
@Hamikon I can put up with it, but would rather not. The field of view increase is the biggest reason I prefer the SNES version. Also Ocarina of Time has aged pretty badly. Windwaker is pretty good besides being too short, and the triforce-finding quest, and yes; I know the Wii U version shortened that segment.
@@inputfunny thats a lil nit picky, a lil arbitrary but go off
The gba ports of many of these look good tbh, the lighter color can be made darker by messing with the TV settings if playing on a Gameboy player, it's also nice having the option to switch between portable and home console
Except for all the times *noticeably* less colors are used on the GBA, especially when colors are so bright and washed out that it loses many graphical details. Of course, some GBA games are far worse about these things than others. Then throw in the fact the resolution is almost always much smaller and limited/zoomed-in, there's *a lot* that can't be compensated for.
I love how half the ports either have different music than their original or no music at all
Left and right audio split is brilliant.... In my studio with my monitors on blast and greatly appreciated it!
5:44 R-Type 3 is a great game of the SNES, then I see this port and I can't believe it. I imaginated something better.
My mind prefer GBA
My eyes prefer SNES
It's cause almost every game is oversaturated on the GBA to account for playing on unlit/front-lit screens. They look great on actual GBA systems but I don't like them on backlit screens.
@@leatherhidegaming Ah, that explains why the original FF Tactics looks so obnoxiously colorful
No doubt
It seems that everyone plays in emulators this days. In real hardware you wouldnt notice any of this (or barely).
at least its portable tho
Great comparison video. I feel like time and again, the main thing the GBA version seemed to struggle with when compares to SNES is the sound department. I think something that the GBA and the Sega Genesis have in common is that it's *possible* to get amazing sound and music out of both devices, but some inept or lazy programmers who either didn't know how or didn't feel like putting in the effort, and some really rough soundtracks and sound effects were often the result.
A lot of GBA original music is really good. Superstar saga is just amazing haha. The ports is where the SNES outshines it
I can't believe I watched an 8 minute video of GBA ports.
Wow, Blackthorne really got screwed by the whole "Blast up the contrast to account for the lack of backlight" thing, didn't it?
Most gba games before 2005 should not be played on any sort of backlit screen. Playing them on an Ags001 sp looks a lot better
The lack of contrast in the GBA games is what stands out to me the most. The GBA screen was so dark that developers often dialed the contrast up to 11 to compensate. Playing on an emulator without adjusting the gamma -- as we see here -- isn't a good look for these games.
Also, GBA sprites often appear stretched because CRT pixels were shorter than they were wide and developers accounted for this back then, but many didn't correct for it in the GBA versions.
SNES games are stretched to fit 4:3 TVs, a lot of GBA games actually corrected this
wouldn't it be the opposite? SNES had wider pixels on a CRT
@@brunor.1127 Do the math here. If the the pixels are wider on a CRT, then if you make the pixels square, it's stretched vertically.
This is a reupload, as I made some editing mistakes in the version that I uploaded first (wrong footage with wrong games). That of course couldn't stay up, so I had to fix and render again. Anyway, let me know if you like this video and if you want to see more like it.
@@narutouzumaki5005 you're welcome!
@@CaptRobau 7:16 gba version of Super Mario advance 4 and super famicom got switched
This is an amazing video! The side by side comparison helps so much for those of us trying to decide between the snes or gba release of the 16bit classics. All in just 8 minutes. Thank you.
when I was a kid I had metroid fusion, it was my first real experience with a metroid game and I loved it. years later I finally played super metroid thanks to emulation. if super metroid had been ported to the gba and I played that instead of fusion, I probably would have loved it even more.
Some of these ports are surprising, in the sense that they don't really seem like games that would've been successful enough on the SNES to be worth porting in the first place.
Yeah like....who the hell was asking for Mr.Nutz & Soccer Kid on the go? Lol
Thank you for this video, the most complete comparation found, you should do it with other consoles, I difinetly will share it
It's a lot of work, but maybe I'll get around to doing it for more and more consoles.
@@CaptRobau I hope you do, this was a really well done video. I would be interested in seeing this got other consoles. There is a TH-cam channel (I'm sure you know) that compares console to console ports. But one video per game. I like how you did 48 in one video. Just impressive.
Thanks for the entertainment while waiting on my winter tires swap.
@@CaptRobau next Nds vs N64 Comparison
You gotta give props for the studios who reworked all the sprites so that they could maintain the aspect ratio
During the mid 2010s in college, Ive been buying these classics to experience them in their entirety for the first time (all GBA version, it was a little cheaper btw). And now we’ve gotten the NES and SNES Minis in recent years, as well as the Switch NES/SNES apps, and I love it.
If you have a rev 1/V1 NSwitch you could easily (in comparison) and safely (relatively in comparison to new Switches) mod it to play those classic games on even better emulators
I think Gba games look brighter and lesser contrast to compensate for no backlight/frontlight in the original gba. Such a shame cuz they look identical otherwise
Correct, that's the reason. 3 primary aspects inferior on GBA ports: Lowered/limited resolution causing the 'zoomed in' look, the simplified/brighter/washed-out colors sometimes cause loss in the graphical details themselves, and most of the time the sound is *vastly* lower quality. Fortunately it's not always a total loss, since some games throw in some extra features on the GBA.
Next time you do these kinds of videos, I think it would be better to switch audio between the videos instead of playing them both at the same time. It's more pleasant, and it's easier to compare them. An example would be to look at the comparisons from the channel, silenig. That channel does a perfect job.
Good idea
This just confirms to me that if only the GBA had the same resolution as the SNES and a back light so they didn't convert all the graphics into washed-out and often garish versions of the originals, it really would have been the ultimate "SNES" console" basically. They could have put pretty much every SNES game onto it perfectly replicated and even improved in many ways, like that version of Doom for example, and fixed a lot of the issue in the originals like the slowdown that many SNES games suffered. I mean, technically it's leagues beyond the SNES in almost every aspect. But, what we really got was usually kinda ugly versions of seminal all the SNES and slightly zoomed in so you saw less of game view, which was almost always a negative. Don't get me wrong, I loved my GBA SP. But what could have been....
"if only the GBA had the same resolution as the SNES and a back light so they didn't convert all the graphics into washed-out and often garish versions of the originals"
Do you want it to vacuum up batteries? There were no affordable rechargeable batteries back then.
You forgot remakes only released in Europe and Japan like Asterix and Obelix bash them all, revenge of the Smurfs, the works
When GBA was new it never occurred to me the screen ratio was different and the games were being cropped… So clear to see here, thanks for this great vid
I imagine it's been mentioned since there's a good 500 comments on the vid, but I am mildly amused by how the SMB3/SMAdv4 screens/audios were swapped around seemingly by accident. Caught my attention!
Also good choice on the ToP clip being the *INDIGNATION!* line, that one's a BELTER
7:15 i was confused for a moment lol they got swapped
In my opinion SNES versions have better colours, better contrast, clean image and better audio than GBA versions (listened with an audio headset), but GBA may have better translation and a brighter image. But in fact, the games are better on SNES.
7:19 sides are switched
I wish when they did the port they kept the game the same. It’s throwing me off how Donkey Kong Country 2 is different. From the menu to the music, the colors, basically everything. If the GBA is in fact more capable than the SNES then why change the game so much? Why not just improve on the visuals or just keep the game the same? I have to say I definitely prefer the original to many of the ports.
With a V2 IPS screen mod the graphics on a GBA are greatly improved. Excellent video and thank you for sharing...
Man I had no idea how many obscure SNES games came to the GBA, Mr Nutz?
Fascinating comparison. In general the rule of thumb seems to be that the GBA versions ramp up the color, brightness and contrast as well as changing up the color pallete here and there and zooming in the aspect ratio (presumably to be more easily visible on the handheld screen), but there are one or two interesting exemptions. Donkey Kong Country GBA, in fact, seems to have widened the aspect ratio from the SNES version, so there is more visible on the screen at any one time and all tge sprites are appropriately a little smaller.
Games appear more zoomed in on the Game Boy Advance since it has a lower screen resolution, especially vertically. SNES is 256*224, GBA is 240*160. In terms of color, the original Game Boy Advance had no backlight (VERY dark screen) and was somewhat desaturated, so games were made brighter and more saturated to accommodate for the screen. The Donkey Kong Country ports appear more zoomed out, since the sprites were re-rendered at a smaller size.
I know this is outside the scope for this video, but I would also be interested in seeing Mega Drive to GBA comparisons - there were some good ones like Phantasy Star II, and some really really bad ones like Sonic the Hedgehog.
I Gotta Find DOOM, PHALANX, SUPER GHOULS 'N GHOSTS, and WOLFENSTEIN 3D
I never fully realized how bad the crammed visuals were...that explains why "Mystical Quest" was SO much harder....
Holy crap. I had no idea that the GBA had so many SNES ports.
This is very useful. I wish to see Sega Genesis vs. GBA.
Not a very good comparison, the snes games need scanlines and the gba needs the dot lcd shader. Like they NEED them to look correct. Sometimes instead of single pixel you end up with something that is glowing, shaded, or transparent. It's so important.
The dkc ports are a guilty pleasure of mine, somedays I'll get home from work and play 1 all the way through.
wow im really glad you made this
So, the GBA is basically a SNES that fits in your pocket.
Yeah just alittle more powerfull the gba had ssx tricky wich is a ps2 game sure the gba version is slow but i am shocked that any ps2 game could make it on the gba
@@michael-johnbrown2881 I used to game on an Amstrad CPC 464 (yeah, I'm old). When you see a port of an arcade game on that, it's a little like PS2 to GBA. Not that bad, though.
@@michael-johnbrown2881 Don't forget the DEMO of RE 2 in the GBA,full 3D.
@Neil Metcalfe
No. The SNES doesn't even come close in raw speed or horsepower. And the SNES has weird weaknesses, like only being able to use two sprite tile sizes per screen and only accessing the VRAM during a VBlank.
And that's just the start of the list. There's no way you're running Gunstar Superheroes on an SNES.
The GBA can also run two mode 7 style layers at the same time. And display 4096 colors.
But none of that matters, because the GBA shipped without a backlight, so the games mostly look washed out. And the resolution is lower, meaning most games couldn't afford to show off how large their sprites could be, without impacting gameplay. Then there's the sound issue...
So, basically, the cpu destroys the SNES in every way, except the SNES still has better versions of SNES games.
@@juststatedtheobvious9633 You're right. The SNES CPU has a very low clock speed. It's amazing what it could do given the weak CPU.
Very good comparison. As an owner of a GBA, Snes mini, nes mini, and other game boys, this video is quite useful
I'm surprised that while you included european based games such as The Smurfs, you forgot another by the same publisher, for Asterix:
SNES: Asterix & Obelix ( 1995 )
GBA: Asterix: Bash them all! ( 2002 ) as part of a 2 in 1 cartridge.
7:14 the footage are swapped, I'm sure I noticed that part. but now I can see the difference between Mario all stars and Super Mario advance games. Those are my favorite childhood games I played since I was young playing it on a Old GBA SP or something.
You forgot International Superstar Soccer (the 2002 game, without 'Advance' in the title). It is a port of International Superstar Soccer Deluxe for the SNES.
great video, in romhacking i found some patches for enhance colors in gba and match snes colors.
in 7:14 is swaped, the games are in wrong place
There are indeed some great color correction patches on romhacking. I was already made aware of the 7:14 switch.
I played the gba ports because in most cases the gameplay had nice little tweaks, extra content and improved translations, but the sound left a lot to be desired
SNES: released in 1990
GBA: released in 2001
Gba bright is for non backlight
Cara! Ficou muito bom o vídeo👍👍
Great comparison video! Love both consoles, with a bigger preference towards the GBA. Probably alone on that, hehe.
Thanks. I get it. A SNES on the go is a pretty nice thing to have, even if the quality itself can be lacking at times. Kind of like the Switch. Docked you can play it 1080p and with higher FPS. But there's just something special about playing Mario or Zelda on the go.
Thank you for your hard work sir! Please keep uploading more comparisons
6:33
I love the name of the GBA version
Xd
1:03 I didn't know that the SNES had games released in 2002 and the GBA had games released in 1992! I guess I've still got a lot to learn!
real strong content on the choice for the breath of fire 2 scene to compare there, champ
I understand the lower resolution, but I am not a big fan of the high contrast. I suppose it's because the original GBA had no back light.
NIce comparison video.
Kind of brings a little tear to your eyes :')
It's interesting how Donkey Kong Country is the only game where the character sprite is smaller on the GBA and every other game it's bigger on the GBA
Technically the sprites are not bigger in the other games. They are the same resolution as on SNES. The total resolution of the GBA screen is lower so you end up with a cropped image. DKC was able to resize the sprites without losing too much graphic quality because of the style of graphics they used. You couldn't really rescale Mario without messing up what he looks like.
@@chamoo232 Yeah maybe
@@chamoo232Still nice they made the effort. Keeps it playable. And 3 got a whole new soundtrack!
I love how some of them are straight ports with wonky coloration, but some of them are straight-up not even the same game visually.
The effect when wearing headphones is insane
Muy buenas conversiones, me impresiona el Upgrade en algunos casos y en otros únicamente es una subida en la saturación del color o brillo pero en general está perfecto
El aumento de saturación y brillo se debe a que el primer modelo de gba no tenía iluminación en la pantalla por eso los juegos tienen más brillo
The SNES is better almost every time. I was also surprised to see that the 3:2 ratio in these games is zoomed in and not a natural wide screen.
The GBA versions of Shin Megami Tensei 1 and 2 aren't SNES ports, they're ports of the PSX remakes
Never been a fan of portable gaming, a lot of these ports are decent, but the majority suffer from early GBA non-backlite problem for which a lot of developers had to washout colors and raise brightness to remedy that. We can deal with aspect ratio change but colors and contrast is a game changer, at least visually. Some of the GBA ports suffer from severe FPS drops and that was also an issue.
.. The genesis to GBA ports were ALWAYS lazy, but the SNES to GBA were good on average.
GBA is great don’t get me wrong and I really enjoy it and the awesome part is it has extra features for previous games that were on the SNES and additional unlockables
But? SNES for the win because it has the right lighting, pixels, shaders, perfect contrast and the older TVs takes advantage of this than modern HD TVs nowadays...the feeling of a cartridge in your hands is nostalgic in 2021
instruction manuals were thicc!!! That word also didn’t exist in the 90’s hehe...but I do remember dweeb and radical, but no one uses those words anymore
God I feel old
If you lower the tv contrast+lower the gamma these gba ports are better. The only drawback is the sound and some games cluttered the hud to fill the smaller screen
@@laughingseal2282
Agreed...actually you’re right it does look better
@@laughingseal2282 nah. the super nintendo did a much better job dithering gradients and appeared smoother
When Yoshi's Island came to GBA I needed several changes of pants. Then it came to the 3ds ambassador program and the same result.
7:14 Just noticed that in the SNES position, it screens the GBA version and in the GBA position, it screens the SNES version ... They're swapped each other
6:33 With the title like "The Revenge of the Smurfs" they made it sound like the Smurfs are the antagonists.
This is exactly why I'm one of the very few people who loves the front-lid GBA SP AGS-001 screen. Yes, the backlit screens are technically superior, but almost every single GBA games has been designed for an unlit screen and so they end up looking too oversaturated on backlit screens. The AGS-001 isn't without its flaws, but games on it look as it was intended.
Well said, although a game like Donkey Kong country 3 on the gba looks much better with the backlit screen (dare I say I prefer the gba port over the snes?)Gba games did start looking a lot better from 2005 and forward since they didn’t need to deal with developing games to accommodate the dark screen anymore
Haha wow, I forgot how bad the Earthworm Jim 2 GBA port was. They cut out like 50% of the sprite animation to save on cart space.
5:35 Tom scream?
some games definitely handled brightening the graphics better than others; the image looks outright blown out for the unbacklit GBA screen in some of these games. :S
Nice video dude !! Thanks !!
I would assume the reason a lot of these GBA ports are so much brighter is because the original advance didn't had a backlit screen and the devs wanted to adjust for that
Some people complain that many SNES ports on GBA have a zoomed-in screen as compared to their SNES originals, calling it 'screen crunch' or the like. But what they need to understand that these consoles, even though similar when it comes to capablities, have very different construction. GBA is a handheld console and as such, uses a small built-it in screen. SNES, on the other hand, is a home console, which can have resolution as large as a TV screen is. It's not surprise that display of GBA games need to be closed-up because if you tried to pay them in original resolution of SNES games, you would hardly see anything or screen, it would just be very small. Of course, not all SNES ports are zoomed-in but this is the reason why majority of them is.
The Revenge of the Smurfs?! Damn that's dark.
Most GBA ports retained the original SNES assets resolution but as a result you could only see a subsection of what would've been an original full-screen image (notice how there's up-down scrolling in the RPGs on GBA advance that isn't there on the SNES.) Kinda like the old pan-and-scan VHS releases of movies were edited for TV screens. I do notice that Contra III appears to have been redrawn to retain the original screen ratio at a lower resolution. Also the Donkey Kong Country games have either been downscaled, or possibly re-rendered at a lower resolution from the original 3D art, for a similar effect. It doesn't look nearly as good on GBA, but it's interesting to see side-by-side.
7:13 you switched super mario all star and super mario advance 4's footage. The one on the left is for the gba, the one on the right is for the snes
SO.MUCH.SCREEN.CRUNCHING!
Weirdly enough, the Mario games didn't have that problem compared to the other platformers that got ported on the GBA.
Another case of developers needing to take cues from Nintendo but screw themselves over at in the end lol.
6:30 Simcity 2000 came out in 2003 on the GBA, not 2000. Out of that and the other errors, this is a pretty good video.
Thanks for the correction.
2:23 I'm pretty sure Doom wasn't ported from the SNES.
Take care checking for errors next time, I noticed text and footage on the wrong sides.
The ports of SNES games to GBA are not bad, but most are stretched or cut because of the screen and the colors are not good compared to the original, so it would be better to reprogram the sprites and configure the colors to be more similar to of the SNES and not make it so clear that it seems that the game is erased when moving some characters into a part of the scenario that is clear.
It would look terrible on the original screens, both the original GBA and GBA SP 001.
I was playing the games on TV back then even more now..
Videazo broo, un suscriptor más, has uno de los de Game Boy con Nes.
I will always remember the memories I have with my brothers playing The SNES ☺️
Everyone's talking about the higher contrast due to no back-light, but if you look closely the camera is slightly more zoomed in on the GBA versions too, likely due to it not quite being able to process the same draw distance as the SNES.
No, because the GBA screen is tiny, so they didn't want the characters to be ants.
@@DerpDerp3001 That's not the reason at all. It's the resolution of the screen. Snes is 320x240. GBA is 240x160. The majority of games just crop the right, bottom and top a bit and went with that. The Donkey Kong Country games went the extra mile and rescaled everything down so you don't lose parts of the screen. You lose details on the sprites but it helps a lot with levels that require fast reflexes like the mine cart levels.
it's too bad the GBA version was the version of tales of fantasia to see a western release (yes, I know there was the IOS port, but we don't like to talk about it).