[Storm Eagle]

I'm thinking back to the days of the SNES and the Genesis squaring off against each other in the 16-bit arena. A game gets released for both systems, but the Genesis version usually had more perks. Here, let me give some examples:

-Street Fighter II-Special Champion Edition for the Genesis: Unlike SNES's Street Fighter II Turbo has a Group Battle option, and requires no code for the ten speed levels. SF2T only had four basic speed levels without a code. The Genesis version even had that cinema scene at the beginning of the game that you'd see in the arcade version. You know, where it has two guys about to fight in front of a building, and one guy punches the other.

-Super Street Fighter 2: The Genesis version had a special mode which requires you to fight every character before going up against the four bosses Balrog, Vega, Sagat, and M. Bison. It even had one more speed level than the SNES version. Despite all this, most magazines said that the SNES version was the slightly better version.

-Mortal Kombat II: The SNES version may have been hailed as the better version, but unlike the Genesis version, the SNES version required a code for 30 chances to continue your game.

-NBA Jam/NBA Jam Tournament Edition: The Genesis version had all the voice samples from the arcade game, even though they sounded horrible on Genesis. It even had the music when you played rounds.

-Earthworm Jim: The SNES version was one stage short of the Genesis version.

-Shaq Fu: The Genesis version had more fighters from what I read.

Does anybody remember other games released for both platforms that would fit these descriptions, and maybe know why the Genesis versions usually had more perks?

I've always been convinced that the reason why the Genesis version usually had more features was to make up for the fact that the technology of the Genesis was inferior compared to that of the SNES. Thus the SNES versions would have sharper graphics, more colors than their Genesis counterparts, crisper sound effects, and clearer voice samples. Voice samples on the Genesis make the speaker sound as though he or she has phlegm in their throat.

I remember reading a letter from a reader in EGM about this issue as well. Then he asked if Nintendo expects us to buy their games just because they have the Nintendo seal of quality on them. I'm sure it's not Nintendo's fault though. It's their licensee companies that produce these games for them, while Nintendo only licenses the games. Then they just take what they get.