Mapping the PCs to the Console Generations: Gen 4
Gen 4 consoles: MD/GEN w/ CD addon, SNES w/ chips, PCE w/ CD addon, Wonderswan, Neo Geo Pocket (16-bit CPU, 8-bit sound - 2x SMS)
PCs:
PCs:
Games pictured: Defender of the Crown, Marble Madness, Battle Chess, North & South, Three Stooges, Starglider II, Buggy Boy, Elite, Powerdrome, Winter Games, California Games, IK+, R-Type, SimCity, Skyfox, Carrier Command, Dungeon Master, Quest for the Time-bird, Weird Dreams, Stunt Track Racer, It Came from the Desert, Virus, Shadow of the Beast, Total Eclipse; Lotus, Wings, R-Type II, Ambermoon, Another World, Indianapolis 500, Lionheart, Turrican II, Vroom, Stardust, Cannon Fodder, Lemmings, Moonstone, Blastar, Speedball, Agony, Chaos Engine, The Settlers, Disposable Heroes, Simulcra, Populous II, Flashback, Bubba 'n Stix, Ruff 'n Tumble
Commodore Amiga (A500-A1000 (~1985-1994; Motorola 68000 at 7 MHz (16-bit internal data bus))
The Amiga was truly ahead of its time for home systems in 1985, featuring graphics and audio capabilities on par with the fourth generation. The whole series can be roughly divided into three eras based on their chipsets. The first chipset, OCS, features hardware scrolling and sprites. It lets the Amiga display up to 32 in-game colors from a palette of 4096 in standard mode, and up to 64 in-game colors using the Extra Half-Brite mode (EHB; kind of similar to the shadow/highlight mode on the MD/GEN), at up to 640x256 (PAL) or 640x200 (NTSC) resolution in standard modes. There are also Hold and Modify (HAM) modes, which let it display all 4096 colors at once or even more, but which was very rarely (or never?) used for games during the series commercial lifespan due to limitations. Finally there are two co-processors called Copper and Blitter - the first of which can be used to display either additional color gradients (used in Shadow of the Beast and other games) or more sprites per line but under certain limitations - it could for example be used for additional background layers as seen in Leander/Galahad and Toki. The Blitter can draw lines super quickly, among some other things, including drawing additional sprite tiles. These two helped against the competition since the Amiga only featured 8 hardware sprites without them and their size wasn't flexible, nor was the colors per sprite limitation as high but there were ways around this (Battle Chess shows some 17 color sprites, for example). 3D games on Amiga tend to be a bit choppy without the later A1200 model's better CPU, though certain games like Carrier Command and Powerdrome are pretty smooth on an A1000 and the games generally run a bit smoother than on the MD/GEN.
The second chipset, ECS (1990), let it display up to 64 colors from a palette of 4096 in standard modes and had an improved HAM mode (less artifacting). It also featured 1280x512 (PAL) or 1280x400 (NTSC) resolutions in productivity mode, but at a lower color count, and it was mainly used outside of games. It included the Blitter as well, and supported more RAM.
Audio-wise, the sample-based Paula chip is used and it offers four channels of 8-bit PCM sample playback (two of which could be combined for a 14-bit channel) with stereo panning (hard left/right panning with two channels per side though) and direct memory access (DMA), which made audio less taxing on the CPU. While it took a couple of years for composers and sound designers to make full use of it, by 1987 or so Amiga games would often have much more advanced music and SFX than most games for other home systems. Four channels and hard panning only of course ended up being a weakness compared to the fourth gen consoles or certain other contemporary setups. Software synthesis could be used to emulate having more channels (see for example the intro and title music in Turrican 2), as well as improved stereo mixing, however it was a struggle to use more than 6 channels at once in a game environment and I don't think any games used improved stereo mixing. The Amiga is also home to the first music trackers, which could export module (.mod) music files - the OctaMED tracker could be used for wavetable synthesis, and the use of trackers to emulate the earlier C64 sound is actually how the chiptune term came to be. This music style became pretty popular for games, in part because it reduced file sizes and in part because of the C64 SID chip's popularity. The Paula chip continued to be used up until the CD32, which introduced CD audio and a 16-bit DSP called the Akiko chip. Finally, there were some Amiga sound cards that users could buy, but they don't seem to have been supported much by the games.
A1200 (1992; 32-bit Motorola 68020 CPU at 14 MHz) and Amiga CD32 (1993; 32-bit Motorola 68020 CPU at 14 MHz)
This era of the Amiga series can be considered as in-between the 4th and 5th console generations. In 1992, the AGA (Advanced Graphics Architecture) chipset was introduced and used in the A1200 (2-8 MB RAM), A4000 (2-128 MB RAM) and ACD32 (2 MB RAM). It started being used in games in 1993 and saw more widespread use by 1994. As you can guess it focused on graphical improvements, though compared to what DOS PCs and the next generation of consoles were doing it is considered too little, too late, and the Amiga was basically dead by 1995. It could display up to 256 colors in standard modes (8-bit) and up to 262,144 colors in HAM-8 mode (18-bit, again there's less artifacting; seems to very rarely have been used in-game), chosen from a palette of 16.8 million making it a 24-bit color palette. It allowed for the same maximum resolutions as ECS, but with more color depth and additional display modes.
Various games using AGA and supporting both it and previous chipsets actually look pretty much the same in AGA, as you can see in this video, but there are exceptions: Super Stardust (single screen, top down view levels only), Brian the Lion, Xtreme Racing, Alien Breed 3D, Slam Tilt, OnEscapee, Worms: Director's Cut, Olofight, Genetic Species and T-Zero are among the most colorful AGA games. The AGA supporting Amiga models also used a CPU more comparable to the 3DO's (although I would say the 3DO has a bit of an edge for 3D games going by Need for Speed and Roas Rash), but worse than the two CPUs in the 32X (which in turn were weaker than the ones in the Jaguar, Saturn, PS1 and N64). Sadly, a decent number of good multiplatform PC games from 1992 onwards don't support AGA, and as we all know the Amiga lagged behind when it came to FPS games. It's worth noting however, that as the recent homebrew game Dread shows, something very close to Doom is actually possible even on the stock A500!
Commodore Amiga (A500-A1000 (~1985-1994; Motorola 68000 at 7 MHz (16-bit internal data bus))
The Amiga was truly ahead of its time for home systems in 1985, featuring graphics and audio capabilities on par with the fourth generation. The whole series can be roughly divided into three eras based on their chipsets. The first chipset, OCS, features hardware scrolling and sprites. It lets the Amiga display up to 32 in-game colors from a palette of 4096 in standard mode, and up to 64 in-game colors using the Extra Half-Brite mode (EHB; kind of similar to the shadow/highlight mode on the MD/GEN), at up to 640x256 (PAL) or 640x200 (NTSC) resolution in standard modes. There are also Hold and Modify (HAM) modes, which let it display all 4096 colors at once or even more, but which was very rarely (or never?) used for games during the series commercial lifespan due to limitations. Finally there are two co-processors called Copper and Blitter - the first of which can be used to display either additional color gradients (used in Shadow of the Beast and other games) or more sprites per line but under certain limitations - it could for example be used for additional background layers as seen in Leander/Galahad and Toki. The Blitter can draw lines super quickly, among some other things, including drawing additional sprite tiles. These two helped against the competition since the Amiga only featured 8 hardware sprites without them and their size wasn't flexible, nor was the colors per sprite limitation as high but there were ways around this (Battle Chess shows some 17 color sprites, for example). 3D games on Amiga tend to be a bit choppy without the later A1200 model's better CPU, though certain games like Carrier Command and Powerdrome are pretty smooth on an A1000 and the games generally run a bit smoother than on the MD/GEN.
The second chipset, ECS (1990), let it display up to 64 colors from a palette of 4096 in standard modes and had an improved HAM mode (less artifacting). It also featured 1280x512 (PAL) or 1280x400 (NTSC) resolutions in productivity mode, but at a lower color count, and it was mainly used outside of games. It included the Blitter as well, and supported more RAM.
Audio-wise, the sample-based Paula chip is used and it offers four channels of 8-bit PCM sample playback (two of which could be combined for a 14-bit channel) with stereo panning (hard left/right panning with two channels per side though) and direct memory access (DMA), which made audio less taxing on the CPU. While it took a couple of years for composers and sound designers to make full use of it, by 1987 or so Amiga games would often have much more advanced music and SFX than most games for other home systems. Four channels and hard panning only of course ended up being a weakness compared to the fourth gen consoles or certain other contemporary setups. Software synthesis could be used to emulate having more channels (see for example the intro and title music in Turrican 2), as well as improved stereo mixing, however it was a struggle to use more than 6 channels at once in a game environment and I don't think any games used improved stereo mixing. The Amiga is also home to the first music trackers, which could export module (.mod) music files - the OctaMED tracker could be used for wavetable synthesis, and the use of trackers to emulate the earlier C64 sound is actually how the chiptune term came to be. This music style became pretty popular for games, in part because it reduced file sizes and in part because of the C64 SID chip's popularity. The Paula chip continued to be used up until the CD32, which introduced CD audio and a 16-bit DSP called the Akiko chip. Finally, there were some Amiga sound cards that users could buy, but they don't seem to have been supported much by the games.
A1200 (1992; 32-bit Motorola 68020 CPU at 14 MHz) and Amiga CD32 (1993; 32-bit Motorola 68020 CPU at 14 MHz)
This era of the Amiga series can be considered as in-between the 4th and 5th console generations. In 1992, the AGA (Advanced Graphics Architecture) chipset was introduced and used in the A1200 (2-8 MB RAM), A4000 (2-128 MB RAM) and ACD32 (2 MB RAM). It started being used in games in 1993 and saw more widespread use by 1994. As you can guess it focused on graphical improvements, though compared to what DOS PCs and the next generation of consoles were doing it is considered too little, too late, and the Amiga was basically dead by 1995. It could display up to 256 colors in standard modes (8-bit) and up to 262,144 colors in HAM-8 mode (18-bit, again there's less artifacting; seems to very rarely have been used in-game), chosen from a palette of 16.8 million making it a 24-bit color palette. It allowed for the same maximum resolutions as ECS, but with more color depth and additional display modes.
Various games using AGA and supporting both it and previous chipsets actually look pretty much the same in AGA, as you can see in this video, but there are exceptions: Super Stardust (single screen, top down view levels only), Brian the Lion, Xtreme Racing, Alien Breed 3D, Slam Tilt, OnEscapee, Worms: Director's Cut, Olofight, Genetic Species and T-Zero are among the most colorful AGA games. The AGA supporting Amiga models also used a CPU more comparable to the 3DO's (although I would say the 3DO has a bit of an edge for 3D games going by Need for Speed and Roas Rash), but worse than the two CPUs in the 32X (which in turn were weaker than the ones in the Jaguar, Saturn, PS1 and N64). Sadly, a decent number of good multiplatform PC games from 1992 onwards don't support AGA, and as we all know the Amiga lagged behind when it came to FPS games. It's worth noting however, that as the recent homebrew game Dread shows, something very close to Doom is actually possible even on the stock A500!
Games pictured (note that I skipped several noteworthy games due to not finding i386 footage): Populous, Rise of the Dragon, Golden Axe, Corporation, Space Quest IV, MS Flight Sim 3.0, Resolution 101, Stunts, Budokan, King's Quest V, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Prince of Persia, Cruise for a Corpse, Dune, Adventures of Willy Beamish, Dagger of Amon Ra/Laura Bow 2, Monkey Island, Eye of the Beholder II, Dune II, Test Drive III, Red Baron, Wing Commander, Monkey Island 2, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis; Quest for Glory VGA, Quest for Glory III, Star Trek: 25th Anniversary, Wolfenstein 3D, Ultima Underworld, King's Quest VI, Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold, Maniac Mansion: Day of the Tentacle, Quest for Glory IV, Populous II, Simon the Sorcerer, Doom, Mortal Kombat, Sam & Max, Space Quest V, Litil Divil, Tornado, Lion King, Warcraft, Legend of Kyrandia 3, Theme Park, Raptor, X-COM, Jazz Jackrabbit
VGA era PC (~1988-1994; i386 or Am386 CPU at 16 MHz by default - up to 40 MHz later on; Compaq Deskpro 386 (1986; 16 MHz CPU, 1-16 MB RAM) and IBM PS/2 Model 80 (1987; 20 MHz CPU, 1-8 MB RAM))
VGA graphics cards started being used the same year they were released, 1987 (see Rockford: The Arcade Game), but it didn't take over as the standard for major developers until around 1991. It offered 256 colors at once at a 320 (up to 400)x200 resolution (or 16 colors at higher resolutions), making the games roughly on par with SNES games except with an 8x larger master palette. But again the PCs had an advantage when it came to 3D games as seen in Alone in the Dark, Wolfenstein 3D (which runs well on SNES and in the more recent MD homebrew but doesn't look the part), Doom (which required an extra chip to play on SNES, and used the 32X addon for the MD), MS Flight Sim 3.0, Stunts and Ultima Underworld. The VGA card could also be controlled directly through registers instead of the BIOS, which enabled effects like smooth scrolling and enhanced animation performance, as well as 320x400 or 320x240 resolutions. Some notable games supporting this are Epic Pinball, Doom, Jazz Jackrabbit, Albion, Alien Rampage, Mortal Kombat 3, Destruction Derby and Microsoft Flight Simulator 5.0.
An i386 CPU started becoming required by games in 1988 but didn't become a widespread minimum requirement until around 1991 (Micro Machines, Turrican II, Populous II, etc) - many games lack online footage running on a standard 386 build but I've found that Resolution 101, Corporation and Red Baron run well on one. I've also found that certain games run well on an i286 or a higher clocked one, as mentioned before. Most of the more demanding DOS games from around 1990-1992 seem to play well on a 20 MHz i386 CPU, with some exceptions like Ultima Underworld, World Circuit and possibly Dune II with large armies in play. Doom plays alright on a 33 MHz one w/ 8 MB RAM (at least this model), but you'd probably want to reduce the screen size a bit which also makes everything smaller.
As a last note relating to how well the games run, there's also cache/high speed memory, implemented using SRAM or DRAM. This started being included with 386 CPUs in 1990, and external (L2) cache memory could be expanded to 256 KB for this CPU series, which sounds minor but was actually significant at the time.
Another PC (& Amiga) strength that became apparent during this period was the mouse and keyboard controls, which started seeing more widespread use and branching out into new genres such as FPS and RTS games (it's not that widely known but even Wolfenstein 3D actually supported mouse and keyboard controls with strafing (though not circle strafing), the mouse controls were just a bit weird in that it also moved you forward and backward but couldn't be used to run so you'd still want to use the keyboard to move longer distances). These also made for a smoother experience in most strategy games.
For sound, Sound Blaster cards remained dominant during this era and these got better and better sample playback almost every year, as well as dual OPL2/YM3812 sound chips since SB Pro in 1991, then replaced the OPL2 with the OPL3/YMF262 chip in 1992 with SB Pro 2. The OPL3 chip is backwards compatible with the OPL2 (not dual OPL2 though, but relatively few games used it). Also released in 1992, the Sound Blaster 16 introduced basic General MIDI and increased the sample playback quality to around CD quality audio (stereo, 44.1Khz). In 1994, the AWE32 card also introduced "wavetable"* support via the EMU8000 synth. Sample-based, tracker-based soundtracks played back through .mod files and software .mod players grew more common during this era, thanks to these cards and the use of .mod files on the Amiga computers. With .mod files (as well as recorded music in whatever was the .mp3 equivalent format at the time), all the sound data is stored in each music file, so during this era video game music on PC became much less hardware dependent. While it took a while for it to become mainstream, parallel to this development was also CD audio since 1990, which would remove many limitations on video game sound when it came to the music, as well as help with cheaper storage of SFX samples in games. MIDI- or tracker-based solutions still had some advantages though: seamlessly looping tracks, dynamic/adaptive music and sound, and file size.
*This isn't actually wavetable as I've described it earlier (used for the PC Engine, Famicom Disk System, Amiga and GB), but instead a MIDI synth that unless you expanded the SB AWE32 sound card's RAM and used Windows OS for custom instrument support, you were stuck with a default library of sounds that make it lower tier among other MIDI modules of the '90s.
VGA era PC (~1988-1994; i386 or Am386 CPU at 16 MHz by default - up to 40 MHz later on; Compaq Deskpro 386 (1986; 16 MHz CPU, 1-16 MB RAM) and IBM PS/2 Model 80 (1987; 20 MHz CPU, 1-8 MB RAM))
VGA graphics cards started being used the same year they were released, 1987 (see Rockford: The Arcade Game), but it didn't take over as the standard for major developers until around 1991. It offered 256 colors at once at a 320 (up to 400)x200 resolution (or 16 colors at higher resolutions), making the games roughly on par with SNES games except with an 8x larger master palette. But again the PCs had an advantage when it came to 3D games as seen in Alone in the Dark, Wolfenstein 3D (which runs well on SNES and in the more recent MD homebrew but doesn't look the part), Doom (which required an extra chip to play on SNES, and used the 32X addon for the MD), MS Flight Sim 3.0, Stunts and Ultima Underworld. The VGA card could also be controlled directly through registers instead of the BIOS, which enabled effects like smooth scrolling and enhanced animation performance, as well as 320x400 or 320x240 resolutions. Some notable games supporting this are Epic Pinball, Doom, Jazz Jackrabbit, Albion, Alien Rampage, Mortal Kombat 3, Destruction Derby and Microsoft Flight Simulator 5.0.
An i386 CPU started becoming required by games in 1988 but didn't become a widespread minimum requirement until around 1991 (Micro Machines, Turrican II, Populous II, etc) - many games lack online footage running on a standard 386 build but I've found that Resolution 101, Corporation and Red Baron run well on one. I've also found that certain games run well on an i286 or a higher clocked one, as mentioned before. Most of the more demanding DOS games from around 1990-1992 seem to play well on a 20 MHz i386 CPU, with some exceptions like Ultima Underworld, World Circuit and possibly Dune II with large armies in play. Doom plays alright on a 33 MHz one w/ 8 MB RAM (at least this model), but you'd probably want to reduce the screen size a bit which also makes everything smaller.
As a last note relating to how well the games run, there's also cache/high speed memory, implemented using SRAM or DRAM. This started being included with 386 CPUs in 1990, and external (L2) cache memory could be expanded to 256 KB for this CPU series, which sounds minor but was actually significant at the time.
Another PC (& Amiga) strength that became apparent during this period was the mouse and keyboard controls, which started seeing more widespread use and branching out into new genres such as FPS and RTS games (it's not that widely known but even Wolfenstein 3D actually supported mouse and keyboard controls with strafing (though not circle strafing), the mouse controls were just a bit weird in that it also moved you forward and backward but couldn't be used to run so you'd still want to use the keyboard to move longer distances). These also made for a smoother experience in most strategy games.
For sound, Sound Blaster cards remained dominant during this era and these got better and better sample playback almost every year, as well as dual OPL2/YM3812 sound chips since SB Pro in 1991, then replaced the OPL2 with the OPL3/YMF262 chip in 1992 with SB Pro 2. The OPL3 chip is backwards compatible with the OPL2 (not dual OPL2 though, but relatively few games used it). Also released in 1992, the Sound Blaster 16 introduced basic General MIDI and increased the sample playback quality to around CD quality audio (stereo, 44.1Khz). In 1994, the AWE32 card also introduced "wavetable"* support via the EMU8000 synth. Sample-based, tracker-based soundtracks played back through .mod files and software .mod players grew more common during this era, thanks to these cards and the use of .mod files on the Amiga computers. With .mod files (as well as recorded music in whatever was the .mp3 equivalent format at the time), all the sound data is stored in each music file, so during this era video game music on PC became much less hardware dependent. While it took a while for it to become mainstream, parallel to this development was also CD audio since 1990, which would remove many limitations on video game sound when it came to the music, as well as help with cheaper storage of SFX samples in games. MIDI- or tracker-based solutions still had some advantages though: seamlessly looping tracks, dynamic/adaptive music and sound, and file size.
*This isn't actually wavetable as I've described it earlier (used for the PC Engine, Famicom Disk System, Amiga and GB), but instead a MIDI synth that unless you expanded the SB AWE32 sound card's RAM and used Windows OS for custom instrument support, you were stuck with a default library of sounds that make it lower tier among other MIDI modules of the '90s.
Games pictured: Silent Mobius, Populous, Prince of Persia, Brandish, Lord Monarch, Rusty, Mado Monogatari 1-2-3, Dead of the Brain, Star Cruiser II, Brandish 2, Princess Maker, Farland Story, Totsugeki Mix, Metal Force, Steam Heart's, Rance 4.1, Briganty, Tekkaman Blade, Rude Breaker, Puyo Puyo 2, Flame Zapper Kotsujin, Policenauts, VG II, Farland Story: Juuou no Akashi
NEC PC-98 (~1988-1996; 1988 RA model (i386DX CPU at 16-20 MHz) and PC-9821)
Once again the NEC PC-98 series has a lacking color output at 16 colors from a 4096 color palette (with a few games showing a few more), which seems to have become standard around 1991. There's now an intel-based CPU series used, which you'd think might lead to a more international library on the PC-98 but this isn't really the case - the library is pretty niche, consisting mostly of graphic adventure games which are also porn games. Bizarrely, a decent number of these feature excellent music and sprite work, and some good games in other genres like VG II (fighting) also feature porn. There are some western ports, mainly dungeon crawler RPGs but they seem not as good besides the music, which is sometimes completely different. I did manage to compile a pretty varied showcase of games with some research though, including a pretty smooth FPS/AA/Space Combat Sim in Star Cruiser II. This makes it surprising that there weren't more 3D games besides a port of Wolfenstein 3D, which was released fairly late (1994).
Various action games struggle with choppy scrolling and/or sprite movement well into the mid '90s, making this era of PC-98 computers tricky to categorize, but there are exceptions like the late Briganty (1995) and Flame Zapper Kotzujin (1996) that feel more like a MD or PCE action game. Of course, by 1996 most people had moved on to the next generation of consoles. The Puyo Puyo games also play and animate smoothly, and the second game (1994) displays around 60 colors at once, I assume on certain models of the PC-98, or did it get another graphics card update which was barely used? The only other game showing a similar amount of colors that I've found is Rance 4.1 (1995), which shows over a 100 (edit: apparently these are 9821 games which can show 256 colors, it seems these were rare).
Getting back to the standard color output, it does seem to hit a sweet spot combined with the high resolution and extensive use of dithering where artwork can look quite nice, and even some later action games. Some games also offer nice cutscenes, which are sprite-based like in the PCE CD Ys games or MCD Lunar games. By 1995 or so, IBM-compatible PCs started taking over in Japan along with Windows 95, and the PC-98 series was eventually discontinued. The latter did also support Windows, so I assume it ran better on western PCs and that NEC couldn't keep up when it came to graphics.
For sound, the FM synth-based OPNA/YM2608 chip kept being used throughout this era, with seemingly only a few games supporting only MIDI modules instead. There's also CD audio, though I don't have much info on its use. Policenauts uses a few CD audio tracks (logo, opening, staff roll; otherwise streaming audio in mono - using the OPNA chip's PCM channel I think), and so does Mirrors (1990). Various composers and sound designers really put the OPNA chip to good use during this period, sometimes outshining MD/GEN and even X68K games when it comes to the music.
More: Atari ST (generally identical game library to the Amiga but smaller, and usually with much worse sound), Apple II GS, Acorn Archimedes, PC-88VA (very few games), FM Towns (32-bit i386SX CPU at 16-20 MHz (16-bit data bus); feels like gen 4.5 as arcade ports are generally better but not quite accurate when it comes to the scaler games (the resolution is generally lower as well and sometimes animation is missing, some later ones like Samurai Shodown require a 486 CPU while others like SSF2 don't), and the sound is often CD audio for music (sometimes YM2612/3438)+decent PCM samples for SFX or drums); more than 10x as expensive as the MD and SNES at launch)
Sound summary: MT-32 (IBM PCs, X68000, Mac SE), Sound Blaster w/ OPL3 & Adlib Gold (IBM PCs), .mod (Amiga, IBM PCs), OPNA (PC-88 & PC-98), YM3438+Ricoh RF5c68 (FMT; FM part is 99% identical to YM2612 so a lot like the MCD's setup). The YM2151 (X68000, Sharp X1) and Neo Geo are more like gen 4.5 for sound
Sources besides wikipedia, mobygames and youtube gameplay footage:
Sound Blaster revisions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLeQ2ZAbr3U
OPL1 vs 2 vs 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5knetge5Gs0
Stereo FM: https://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2012/04/
Amiga graphics explained: https://codetapper.com/amiga/sprite-tricks/brian-the-lion/
OCS, ECS, AGA explained: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74L7ggH2qK4
SNES hardware beaten by this simple Amiga trick: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdeUebxTt5M
AGA vs ECS & OCS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vctRBfIT0w
i386DX and some good old games: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQDEKoRcXZc&t=1m49s
ADG Episode 63 - Wolfenstein 3D: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHCsy0Ngp1M
NEC PC-98 (~1988-1996; 1988 RA model (i386DX CPU at 16-20 MHz) and PC-9821)
Once again the NEC PC-98 series has a lacking color output at 16 colors from a 4096 color palette (with a few games showing a few more), which seems to have become standard around 1991. There's now an intel-based CPU series used, which you'd think might lead to a more international library on the PC-98 but this isn't really the case - the library is pretty niche, consisting mostly of graphic adventure games which are also porn games. Bizarrely, a decent number of these feature excellent music and sprite work, and some good games in other genres like VG II (fighting) also feature porn. There are some western ports, mainly dungeon crawler RPGs but they seem not as good besides the music, which is sometimes completely different. I did manage to compile a pretty varied showcase of games with some research though, including a pretty smooth FPS/AA/Space Combat Sim in Star Cruiser II. This makes it surprising that there weren't more 3D games besides a port of Wolfenstein 3D, which was released fairly late (1994).
Various action games struggle with choppy scrolling and/or sprite movement well into the mid '90s, making this era of PC-98 computers tricky to categorize, but there are exceptions like the late Briganty (1995) and Flame Zapper Kotzujin (1996) that feel more like a MD or PCE action game. Of course, by 1996 most people had moved on to the next generation of consoles. The Puyo Puyo games also play and animate smoothly, and the second game (1994) displays around 60 colors at once, I assume on certain models of the PC-98, or did it get another graphics card update which was barely used? The only other game showing a similar amount of colors that I've found is Rance 4.1 (1995), which shows over a 100 (edit: apparently these are 9821 games which can show 256 colors, it seems these were rare).
Getting back to the standard color output, it does seem to hit a sweet spot combined with the high resolution and extensive use of dithering where artwork can look quite nice, and even some later action games. Some games also offer nice cutscenes, which are sprite-based like in the PCE CD Ys games or MCD Lunar games. By 1995 or so, IBM-compatible PCs started taking over in Japan along with Windows 95, and the PC-98 series was eventually discontinued. The latter did also support Windows, so I assume it ran better on western PCs and that NEC couldn't keep up when it came to graphics.
For sound, the FM synth-based OPNA/YM2608 chip kept being used throughout this era, with seemingly only a few games supporting only MIDI modules instead. There's also CD audio, though I don't have much info on its use. Policenauts uses a few CD audio tracks (logo, opening, staff roll; otherwise streaming audio in mono - using the OPNA chip's PCM channel I think), and so does Mirrors (1990). Various composers and sound designers really put the OPNA chip to good use during this period, sometimes outshining MD/GEN and even X68K games when it comes to the music.
More: Atari ST (generally identical game library to the Amiga but smaller, and usually with much worse sound), Apple II GS, Acorn Archimedes, PC-88VA (very few games), FM Towns (32-bit i386SX CPU at 16-20 MHz (16-bit data bus); feels like gen 4.5 as arcade ports are generally better but not quite accurate when it comes to the scaler games (the resolution is generally lower as well and sometimes animation is missing, some later ones like Samurai Shodown require a 486 CPU while others like SSF2 don't), and the sound is often CD audio for music (sometimes YM2612/3438)+decent PCM samples for SFX or drums); more than 10x as expensive as the MD and SNES at launch)
Sound summary: MT-32 (IBM PCs, X68000, Mac SE), Sound Blaster w/ OPL3 & Adlib Gold (IBM PCs), .mod (Amiga, IBM PCs), OPNA (PC-88 & PC-98), YM3438+Ricoh RF5c68 (FMT; FM part is 99% identical to YM2612 so a lot like the MCD's setup). The YM2151 (X68000, Sharp X1) and Neo Geo are more like gen 4.5 for sound
Sources besides wikipedia, mobygames and youtube gameplay footage:
Sound Blaster revisions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLeQ2ZAbr3U
OPL1 vs 2 vs 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5knetge5Gs0
Stereo FM: https://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2012/04/
Amiga graphics explained: https://codetapper.com/amiga/sprite-tricks/brian-the-lion/
OCS, ECS, AGA explained: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74L7ggH2qK4
SNES hardware beaten by this simple Amiga trick: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdeUebxTt5M
AGA vs ECS & OCS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vctRBfIT0w
i386DX and some good old games: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQDEKoRcXZc&t=1m49s
ADG Episode 63 - Wolfenstein 3D: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHCsy0Ngp1M