is the gba as good or better than the snes?

[BEERS AND VIDEOS]

Was just thinking about this.

Both the SNES and GBA have some great exclusive games that take advantage of their hardware, but for some reason SNES ports to the GBA never seem to be as strong or as powerful as they are on the SNES. Either the sound or graphic performance suffer in some way. Final Fantasy IV-VI are good examples, as are Super Ghouls and Ghosts, Contra III, etc. In my opinion, Nintendo ruined a lot of their SNES to GBA ports by adding annoying voices (Super Mario Advance series, Zelda III).

That being said, there are a lot of exclusive games on the GBA that use that extra processing power of the the GBA hardware to do things the SNES never could.

So, I think technically, each system has their strengths and I don't think you can say one beats the other in every case.

[AmishSamurai]

According to the TVTropes article, spec-wise the GBA was about on par with the Neo Geo. Most of the reason the ports were poorer was because of the addition of extra sounds, pointless extra dungeons, and crappy coding (the ports of the Sonic games).

[D.D.D.]

While I really like the GBA, its not as good nor better than the SNES --- if we're strictly talking about SNES ports. The lack of two buttons reallllllllllllly kills it for me.

[noiseredux]

While I really like the GBA, its not as good nor better than the SNES --- if we're strictly talking about SNES ports. The lack of two buttons reallllllllllllly kills it for me.

Really? Which specific games do you find this to be a problem? For instance, on Super Street Fighter II Turbo I have absolutely no problem with the 2 missing buttons. I don't miss them at all, and find the game controls beautifully with 4. Which ports do you find suffer from the transition?

[lisalover1]

While I really like the GBA, its not as good nor better than the SNES --- if we're strictly talking about SNES ports. The lack of two buttons reallllllllllllly kills it for me.

Really? Which specific games do you find this to be a problem? For instance, on Super Street Fighter II Turbo I have absolutely no problem with the 2 missing buttons. I don't miss them at all, and find the game controls beautifully with 4. Which ports do you find suffer from the transition?

Yeah, most SNES games didn't use all the buttons, and the ones that did probably didn't receive GBA ports. The ones that did found inventive ways to include all the functionality sans 2 extra buttons.

[Flake]

Buy a hori stick / controller and the GBA player. Good to go. Take that SNES!

[ZeroAX]

how come no one has posted pics of the DKC games yet?


GBA




SNES








and let us not forget the remixed music in DKC3

SNES version

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jA-XDZNLCug&feature=related

GBA version

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tACc-Qc0GBk


strangely enough, DKC3 is the only one which looks good, but they went and killed the music for no reason.

[flamepanther]

Per the Wikipedia article on Donkey Kong Country...

In 2003, another version of the game was released for the Game Boy Advance. This version had increased brightness, at the cost of contrast and colour saturation, to make the game easier to see on an unlit LCD.

The problem with the graphics isn't the GBA hardware. Rather, it's a questionable design decision. Other SNES ports had this done to them, including Super Mario World, but it hurt DKC a lot workse. I don't know if that's why nobody has mentioned it, but that's why it's not a good benchmark.

[ZeroAX]

ok good point.

but I have to say, I got the feeling that the GBA's sound chip was much worse than the SNES's legendary sound chip, designed by Ken Kutaragi (yes the papa of the playestation) which gave us epic tunes, like the FF6 and Chrono Trigger music.

[alienjesus]

how come no one has posted pics of the DKC games yet?

[....]

strangely enough, DKC3 is the only one which looks good, but they went and killed the music for no reason.

I read that the GBA's sound chip couldnt provide the low bassy notes that were in a lot of DKC3's tracks, and so they made new tracks rather than have butchered old ones. I'm unsure of the validity of this, but it sounds feasible.