Fourth Generation of Video Game Consoles (Dixie Forever)

In the history of computer and video games, the fourth generation (more commonly referred to as the 16-bit era) of games consoles began on October 30, 1987 with the Japanese release of NEC Home Electronics' PC Engine (known as the TurboGrafx-16 in North America). Although NEC released the first fourth generation console, and was second to the Super Famicom in Japan, this era's sales were mostly dominated by the rivalry between Nintendo and Sega's consoles in North America: the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (the Super Famicom in Japan) and the Sega Genesis (named the Mega Drive in other regions).

Nintendo was able to capitalize on its previous success in the third generation and managed to win the largest worldwide market share in the fourth generation as well. Sega was extremely successful in this generation and began a new franchise, Sonic the Hedgehog, to compete with Nintendo's Mario series of games. Several other companies released consoles in this generation, but none of them were widely successful. Nevertheless, several other companies started to take notice of the maturing video game industry and began making plans to release consoles of their own in the future.

The emergence of fifth generation video game consoles did not significantly diminish the popularity of fourth generation consoles for a few years, but in 1996 there was a major drop in sales of fourth generation hardware and a dwindling number of software publishers supporting the systems,[1] which together led to a drop in fourth generation software sales in subsequent years. This generation ended with the discontinuation of the Neo Geo in 2004.

Some features that distinguished fourth generation consoles from third generation consoles include:


 * 16-bit microprocessors
 * Multi-button game controllers (3 to 8 buttons)
 * Parallax scrolling of multi-layer tilemap backgrounds
 * Large sprites (up to 64×64 or 16×512 pixels), 80–380 sprites on screen, though limited to a smaller number per scan line
 * Elaborate colour, 64 to 4096 colours on screen, from palettes of 512 (9-bit) to 65,536 (16-bit) colours
 * Stereo audio, with multiple channels and digital audio playback (PCM, ADPCM, streaming CD-DA audio)
 * Advanced music synthesis (FM synthesis and wavetable sample-based synthesis)

And in specific cases:


 * Backgrounds with pseudo-3D scaling and rotation
 * Sprites that can individually be scaled and rotated
 * Flat-shaded 3D polygon graphics
 * CD-ROM support via add-ons, allowing larger storage space and full motion video playback

Comparison Between the Systems
Enhancement chips:

Super FX: 2,000 flat shading Polygons/sec, 1,000 texture mapping Polygons/sec[65] Super FX 2: 4,000 texture mapping Polygons/sec, 2,000 flat shading Capcom Cx4: Sprite rotation/Calculations for wireframe effects DSP-1: Advance Scaling and Rotation via Mode 7 DSP-2: Dynamic Scaling Capability and Transparency effects DSP-3: Bitstream decompression, and bitplane conversion of graphics DSP-4: Draw Distance

Resolution: 320×224 to 384×264[45] (progressive) Sprites: 380 on screen, 96 per scanline, double line buffering, 16×16 to 16×512 sizes, 16 colors per sprite, sprite scaling, sprite flipping[45] Tilemaps: 1 static plane, and optional 1-3 parallax scrolling planes with scaling and line & column scroll effects[45][66] Colors on screen: 4096 Color palette: 65,536 (16-bit high color)