It looks like you're from the US, and thankfully game companies sometimes remember that the world is more than just your country.
Oh, I know it all too well every time I emulate a new system and have to add in PAL support.
I also find it surprising that you think the SNES is significantly better designed than the Genesis... I don't code for either machine
Most definitely. The Genesis is easier to develop for due to having a CPU that was capable of having a reasonable C compiler for it. But from an emudev perspective, the SNES is leagues nicer to emulate than the Genesis.
a thousand video configurations that affect how you can/can't use VRAM
That's all very configurable.
If anything, the SNES PPU is
too flexible. Very hard to understand the entire process, from start to finish. I really should make a flow chart sometime of how all the various bits and settings come into play on rendering each pixel.
a CPU that changes speed depending on what memory it uses
In practice, this is a transparent detail. Just know that for the ROM fetch portions of CPU instructions, it'll be 25% faster on FastROM. So if you can use FastROM, use it.
When I was a kid I wanted an NES and my parents got me an SMS instead, because it was cheaper due to its lower popularity.
Remind them of that when they ask you for the nicer retirement home ... ;)
[this is obviously a joke]
I also think the Genesis is by far better designed. Essentially no weird quirks
... wow.
You don't consider the format of bits to write to the VDP to be a weird quirk??
I haven't ever even seen the VDP packet format, I don't need to care about it - SGDK does that for me, I tell it to draw this here and it is done.
Yeah, see ... I'm talking about from a hardware design perspective. Not from a programmer perspective. The Genesis wins handily as I said above on account of having a good C compiler for it.
And the SNES is dirty in the sense that you need to fiddle with banks all the time
The SNES is not the NES. Just use 'HiROM', and your ROM is at $c00000-ffffff instead of the Genesis' $00000-3fffff. Very simple.
Yeah, the 'LoROM' style was funky, I'll agree with you on that.
they e.g. crammed sprite coordinate bits together whereas on the MD the 9 bit sprite X coordinate just lives in a 16 bit memory slot with the upper 7 bits left unused
OAM was a disaster too, certainly. Having a few unused memory bits in return for a more linear format of attribute fields would've greatly helped with sprite-intensive games.