There are shots of the Genesis version displayed through A/V outs from both the Genesis and 32X outputs under Game Info-> 32X game pics -> 32X enhancements -> Super Street Fighter 2. These shots show both what the Genesis game actually looks like on a TV, and how the game looks when the 32X upgrade is attached.
Sound is where the real differences are. If one is to hook up their game systems to a nice Dolby Prologic receiver, with speakers designed for said receiver, it can be heard that most to all of the sound effects are digitized sounds in both games, and almost every background song has one to three digitized instruments in them as well.
I never noticed this in the Genesis version with my old lower quality speakers hooked up, but with my new ones, I can hear the telltale flatness of Genesis' digitized sound, accompanied with a slight scratchiness in the instruments and sound effects that are digitized.
The Genesis sound chip, to my knowledge, was never designed for digitized instruments and sound effects, but for analog synthesized sounds, whereas the SNES sound chip was designed specifically for digital sound samples to make up the music and the sound effects.
This explains the extra memory needed for the Genesis games. The Genesis Street Fighter 2 SCE was 24Mb to SF2 Turbo on the SNES's 16Mb, and Super Street Fighter 2 here was 40Mb to the SNES' 32Mb. The SNES most likely had special decompression hardware for digital sounds. At least that's the only way including support of digital instruments would make sense for a cart system. The Genesis, to my knowledge, needed to use one of its processors to play digital instruments, sounds and voice as sound files, and had no specific hardware for it.
This also explains why the SF games are the best examples of scratchy voice samples on the Genesis. Games like MKII, ToeJam & Earl, the Sports Talk games, and others, had much more clear voice samples, but those were the only digital sounds playing at any given time, out of the Genesis' 8 sound channels. The SF games attempt to play digitized instruments, digitized sound effects, and digitized voice samples all at the same time, along with the synthesized instruments that make up the rest of the music and sound effects.
On that subject, with my nice new speakers, I have a greater appreciation for the advancement in sound that Genesis SSF2 had over SCE. Many of the voice samples are not only in stereo, but get sorted to the rear speakers ever so slightly at different times in the fight, the music seems to have much more audio depth, and the sound effects sound deeper and more clear as well. I had originally thought that SSF2 had mono music and sound, but it turns out cheap stereo speakers just weren't picking up the good stuff at all.
While the Genesis sound chips have been insulted many times over the years, especially in comparison to the SNES sound chip, there is definitely something to be said that high quality audio equipment actually enhances the audio quality, rather than just bringing out more flaws.
Also in the Genesis sound's favor is that the audio samples are closer in length and sound, though not in sound quality, to the arcade version's, in both SCE and Super SF2, than the SNES counterpart's is. Apparantly the sound effects used in the SNES games, if not the music as well, was taken straight from some special edition SF2 CD from Japan, rather than the original arcade samples.
The SNES SSF2 sounds might have been mistaken for CD music and sound if some of the digital sounds and voices didn't occasionally crack or sound tinny. Where the Genesis music and sound occasionally makes a subtle appearance on the rear speakers, the SNES game is pumping in full surround almost the whole time.
I'm really impressed by both games overall sound, now that my speakers are playing all of it. The Genesis game doesn't sound scratchy compared to other Genesis audio. The voice samples only crackle ever so slightly , much less so than Special Champion Edition did, and the depth of the digital instruments and sound effects really increases my appreciation of how sophisticated this game was for the Genesis hardware. It all sounded so much worse just coming out of a cheap stereo or TV speakers, like the difference between watching a movie in a theater with the side speakers on and THX, and the same movie with only the front speakers on.
That said, I think the overall audio quality in the Genesis games could still have been improved if they had stuck with synthesized instruments and sound effects, worked in some classic, over the top, Genesis stereo sequencing (MUSHA (all synth), SOR2(synth music)), and made the voice samples as clear as they possibly could be with the left over cart space.
Super Street Fighter II. Gens v 1.80 was used for the Genesis screenshots, and SNES9xw 1.39 was used for the SNES screenshots. No special filtering method was employed for either shot.
Right click to download the Ryu's Stage for Genesis 580 KB MP3 file
Right click to download the Ryu's Stage for SNES 600 KB MP3 file
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