So start off I'm a Hugh fan of the shining force games and since Shining force final conflict for Game gear has recently been translated I was wondering, would it be very time consuming if someone ever decided to create SF FC from scratch to be a genesis ROM to increase the pixel count and just look nicer all around? The reason I ask is because they remade Gideon 1 & 2 for sega CD and those game looked awesome and I was thinking about doing a remake myself if it wouldn't take 4 years to complete. I'm just really curious I guess.

Another thing that sparked my curiosity was the hack of Super Mario brother to make it look like SM3 I thought that was cool and I wanted to do something along the same lines but with shining force final conflict.

any info would be appreciated.

If you really want to make something from scratch, why bother with all the limits of the crappy genesis hardware? Make it for PC and get really pretty hi-res graphics, a CD-Soundtrack and more goddies

I agree with this for the fact that you can make and get your game up and running MUCH faster on the PC than you can on the Genesis. You are learning skills that you can actually make money with in the real world unlike Genesis programming(although learning different types of assembly in general can be useful on a resume).

I don't really buy into limitations being necessary for creativity.  You make your PC game look exactly like a Genesis, SNES, or NES game if you choose to.  You can be just as creative, and you don't have to work within the limitations and quirks of the hardware, nor learn what all the hardware registers do and how to use them.

While I do like homebrew console code and mess around with it myself, for a completely new from scratch game that I intended to finish, I would not write one for Genesis or any other archaic console. But hey, each to his own.

I fondly recall Game Players magazine featuring a review of what they considered the Worst Game Of All Time, a Japanese PS1 game called "Cosmic Race". On the page explaining their rating system, the name of that game was synonymous with a 0% rating.

Sure, but in this case consider another factor besides the limitations. Programming for the genesis is several times more difficult for than the PC. I don't know if there are advanced compilers or full fledged development environments available for the genesis, but I strongly doubt it (at least for homebrew coders).

Your examples are all well and good, but they don't relate to genesis vs. PC programming.  In fact, I would say that I don't think that logic applies to game programming at all.  First, you're ignoring complexity. Second, you're ignoring the fact that learning how to program a game on the genesis doesn't translate well beyond that.  For your music example, you said then you get two more tracks.  Well it's not like that with this situation.  You program a game for Genesis.  Then what? Genesis hardware was unique to the Genesis.  It's not going to help you much at all when it comes to programming a PC game aside from the general procedural knowledge of how a game works. When you set out to code a game, you know what you want it to look like.  As I already said, you can mimic the same 'limitations' on the PC if you want. Code a game in 224x256 resolution if you want.  Use 16 colors if you want.  How the limitations of learning about what you can do during vblank, hardware registers etc. that apply only to one single system in the whole world is beyond me.

You're NOT learning efficiency in this case by having these limitation as you could be with your examples.

As far as throwing too much at a an armature. You throw much LESS at an armature with the PC than you would with the Genesis.  You can create a small game simple  in a matter of hours on the PC. It take that long just for people to learn how to properly initialize the genesis.

I'm sorry, but I don't believe creativity is hampered by not having the limitations of archaic systems.  I know personally MY creativity has not been.

Funny you should mention that.  I coded a 2D mario clone game demo last year.  It was actually CHALLENGING to figure out how to use Direct3D efficiently to do 2D. The framerates weren't all that high for awhile.

I think alot of modern day 2D developers have that issue.  To use any of the major API's(D3D,OpenGL) to do 2D, you're actually doing 3D.  So you learn how to do the 3D, BUT...  the approach you takes needs to be very different between the two despite them being the same if that makes any sense. Personally, I had a challenging time with it for awhile until I really got a grasp on what I was doing.

So, it's not surprising to me that an armature developer writing a 2D game can come out with something that lags on a beefy machine. It's not necessarily because they coded carelessly because they had plenty of system resources, it's because it's not as simple as throwing your sprites on the screen anymore when you have to go through the 3D hurdles.

On the flip side, using 3D really opens you up to some nice hardware accelerated effects such as scaling, rotation, and transparencies(for your 2D game of course) which can be added VERY easily.

The percentage was far lower in the NES/SMS/SNES/TG16/GEN days than during the PSX-and-beyond era. I would say 40% of the games during that time were utter shit with no redeeming value at all, as opposed to 85% in modern times.

Even the Dreamcast, as much as I would love to romanticize it, had about the same ratio of good to shitty games as any other system of its generation.