260°

Ex-Sega Producer Apologizes for Blast Processing

If you grew up during the console war between the Super Nintendo and the Sega Genesis, you may remember the dreaded term "Blast Processing."

Blast Processing was a fabricated term which was supposed to represent how the Sega Genesis was more graphically powerful than the Super Nintendo. Below is a statement taken from Ex-Sega producer Marty Franz who apologizes for creating the coined PR term.

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gamerampage.net
Jackhass3511d ago

Aw, I liked Blast Processing. No need for apologies!

fr0sty3510d ago (Edited 3510d ago )

It was a term used to describe the fact that, while the Genesis was weaker graphically than SNES in every way (sound too), its CPU was a good bit faster. This led to less slowdown in games that had heavy action. It wasn't related to graphics.

choujij3510d ago (Edited 3510d ago )

I think the belief that the Genesis is inferior in sound, is not entirely true. For example, the Genesis is capable of 16bit PCM playback without any hardware modifications. There's several YouTube videos of people playing music from the cartridge if you want to see for yourself.

Cindy-rella3510d ago

Reminds me of people talking about dx12 and cloud computing because the fact is that the xbox one hardware is less powerful than the ps4.

TheCommentator3510d ago

The Genesis says High Definition Graphics right on it! Who knew that 240i is HD. Sega, you were always ahead of your time, lol.

Army_of_Darkness3510d ago

I always found the Genesis version of games much more responsive than the snes counterpart. But yes, the super nes was graphically superior.

alabtrosMyster3509d ago

The SNES was a pixel pushing monster when it was released back in 1991, mode 7 did tricks that were unthinkable on home consoles at the time, all at very good frame rates... I can still recall how f-zero impressed me! The semi transparent objects were a big deal too...

However, the snes had a very weak CPU, games had horrible slowdowns, especially the early titles that did not benefit from extra chips, games like final fight do not show many enemies on the screen compared to the streets of rage games, street fighter II turbo is slower at its max speed on the snes... And the genesis could pull off amazing effects when in the right hands, titles like batman and robins have rotating sprites, something that mode 7 would never pull off (only 1 backgrould layer can be manipulated by it) the genesis version of mega turican has similar effects at well...

When all is said and done the 16-bit area machines were all comparable in many ways they traded blows...the genesis and tg-16 both held their own very well considering that they were released a long time before the Nintendo machine!

fr0sty3509d ago

@choujij, compare voice quality in the street fighter games or mortal kombat games for Genesis and SNES, you'll see SNES wins by a landslide. This was true in just about all games. SNES' voice samples (or any actual sound clips, not MIDI music generated by the sound chip) are always cleaner. The music had a softer, cleaner touch to it as well. Genesis was always harsh, twangy, and lacking bass.

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ZombieKiller3510d ago

PSSHH! It's a little late for apologies! i want my money back! I already bought this piece of sh-- hey wait, what's blast processing?!

lol it's ok, we're good. Playstation is king in 2015

solar3510d ago

Lies to sell us a product. Hopefully that practice has been retired ;)

bmf73643510d ago

Not entirely. Blast processing was a term to describe minor and short-term increases in graphical performance for the Genesis. It was nothing more but a minor coding trick coined into a marketing stunt.

alabtrosMyster3509d ago

Not, really read the quote, I think the guy who wrote the article did not understand what he transcribed...

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jashtheflash3511d ago

I always knew Blast Processing was a sham

gangsta_red3511d ago

Lol, I remember this from a friend who used to work at Sega a long time ago. He also told me it was all a PR stunt from marketing, even still it made for some awesome commercials.

Death3511d ago

This was Sega's way of combating Nintendo's "Mode 7" that was all the rage at the time. In many ways Sony learned from the greats creating the illusion of power by marketing the chips within their consoles. Ask gamers what Xenon is and they will usually just stare at you. Mention the Emotion Engine or Cell and they know right away. People to this day still believe the Xbox 360 is powered by an x86 processor and have no idea it was PowerPC based and has more in common with the Cell than they thought.

BVFTW3510d ago

Dude, you sure love that story! You write about those CPUs every freaking time, even on an snes-genesis/megadrive article.

awi59513510d ago (Edited 3510d ago )

Sega was better at the time we had mature games that never came to nintendo without being censored. The games sounded better as well and you had a headphone jack so i could game at night without getting yelled at by mom. Also the super nintendo came out so late and had no sports or racing games like sega did and that made all the difference.

ApocalypseShadow3510d ago

Lead it to death to spin something about Sega to be a negative about Sony.unsurprised.

I loved blast processing.commercials were funny.

MCTJim3510d ago (Edited 3510d ago )

I remember this..mode 7 was hardware scaling and rotation if I remember correctly.

and as for the apology..i did not read where he said he was sorry...he said I have to take responsibility for that phrase...it was indeed a programming trick for more colors if I remember correctly too.

frostypants3509d ago (Edited 3509d ago )

Mode 7 was a silly name, but it was an actual thing that played a big part in games.

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Muadiib3510d ago

To be fair the Megadrives cpu was over twice as fast as the snes'.

frostypants3510d ago (Edited 3510d ago )

Yeah. The SNES got by on being able to handle pixel scaling and rotation with much less effort, plus it had far superior audio capabilities (think it used a wavetable for music, or something similar, which was pretty amazing for the time). But the Genesis could smoke it in terms of raw speed. Somehow devs closed that apparent gap quite a bit by mid-gen though.

Muadiib3509d ago (Edited 3509d ago )

I remember by heart the colour pallete of the MD was 512 and the snes' was 32,668, yeah I was always a nerd!

I agree the mode7 chip in the snes really gave it an advantage but the MD's cpu when used correctly by developers like Treasure could do some sprite scaling of it's own like in the gorgeous Gunstar Heroes.

Sound wise yeah the MD really struggled in comparison, especially in the area of speech, but programmed well the MD was able to handle some impressive music.

Sega did great in many of their games with Streets of Rage 2 particarly blowing me away, I remember that Konami were also able to get music that was pretty much snes quality!

I loved both consoles but I was a Sega fanboy through and through, not so much anymore for obvious reasons...Sonic 2 still remains one of the high points of my life.

frostypants3509d ago

Man. I need to track down my old consoles now...

Skate-AK3510d ago

I wonder if we will hear the same thing about The Cloud in 20 years. Haha nah I am just playing. That Crackdown demo was pretty impressive.

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190°

SEGA has accidentally revealed 6 years of sales data for some games

SEGA has made a mistake on one of their PDF forms which has inadvertently disclosed full sales numbers of some of the company’s key software releases.

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mynintendonews.com
Phoenix0299d ago

Don't forget they've put a lot of these on gamepass and ps plus so you can add that money to it. Good to see Sega going strong

shinXseijuro9d ago

Happy for sega ! I was expecting some kind of showing of their newer games at game fest but maybe they’re keeling it for TGS? Crazy taxi and jet set needs a trailer or something soon !!!

Runechaz8d ago

Release Phantasy Star 5, Shining force 4 or Skies of Arcadia 2 and look at the number after.

jjb19818d ago

Saaaaaaaaaaaaaay-ga. Good times.

The Wood8d ago

whoops....there's actually a SEGA m2 now.........;)

90°

Sega Announces Financial Results With Significant Growth in Gaming Profits, Discusses Strategy

Today, Sega announced its financial results for the full fiscal year that started in April 2024 and ended in March 2025.

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simulationdaily.com
TheColbertinator49d ago

Atlus coming in strong for Sega thankfully

CrimsonWing6949d ago

What about the Yakuza series and Sonic?

_Decadent_Descent49d ago

I like what's on their legacy IP list, but there are still many more franchises they could revive. Shining Force and Chakan come to mind.

200°

30 Years Ago, Sega Took Its Biggest Gamble With Saturn And Failed

"That’s not how you launch a system".

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timeextension.com
thorstein50d ago

The Dreamcast was the biggest gamble and way ahead of its time.

OtterX50d ago

I wish we lived in the Alternate Timeline where Sega was still a dominant force in the console space and it hadn't been Microsoft.

Deeeeznuuuts49d ago

I've always said this, would much prefer SEGA, such a shame.

blacktiger49d ago

this was all part of the plan to give Microsoft the spot

chicken_in_the_corn49d ago

Would be interesting to see what they would do for a modern console.

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darthv7250d ago

Saturn was a fantastic piece of kit... they just went a little too ambitious with its dual CPU setup. which turned a lot of developers off (at the time). The homebrew community have done some amazing work many years later, thanks to multichip experience. It is still the best platform for arcade fighters and shmups of all time. Dreamcast is a close 2nd though.

Profchaos50d ago

Yeah it was a interesting decision especially when looking at how dual CPU is considered a root cause of why the Jaguar was a failure.

Also the hardware rendered four sided polygons where the standard was three if they kept with triangle polygons I feel the systems development would have been easier to work with and we would have seen more third party ports in the west.

I think it was a victim of its time more than anything it saw huge success in Japan but the leadership and internal turmoil in the west meant games were not getting localised along with a focus on arcade like games were the PlayStation and later the N64 were pushing more in depth experiences over coin munching high score driven games.

Knightofelemia50d ago

I still enjoy my Saturn it was the first console I mowed lawns for and saved up for to purchase. I went so far as to purchase a used Saturn to run off an SD card. I even have a second Dreamcast modded to run off an SD card as well.

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