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trans‧lu‧cent  /trænsˈlusənt, trænz-/
Pronunciation[trans-loo-suhnt, tranz-]
–adjective
1. permitting light to pass through but diffusing it so that persons, objects, etc., on the opposite side are not clearly visible: Frosted window glass is translucent but not transparent.
2. easily understandable; lucid: a translucent explication.
3. clear; transparent: translucent seawater.

When the snes came out, everyone flipped out when they saw colours and objects overlapping each other and creating the resulting colour/texture appear in real time. Instead of going with more ram, they went with a more powerful GPU, which was supposed to be what killed the NEOGEO. Technically, snes was the xbox of it's time, only it had good games. People say if the NEOGEO had translucencies/transparencies it would've been able to compete with the snes in it's target market.

Some Snes Games with translucency/transparency:
Chrono Trigger:

(it's the clouds)
DBZ Hyper Dimension:

Most of the beam attacks had a translucent "shaft".
Also, Starfox for the snes had a noticable transparency when you dropped the bomb. (I couldn't find a pic of it asploding, if a mod finds one edit it into my post...)

It seems small, but it was huge when it came out. It's funny when you put it all into perspective; back then we were blown away by colours merging. Now we demand things like anistropy, texture/bump-mapping, vertexes and anti-aliasing.

It's true, the snes appealed to the wider market by having "better" graphics. The neogeo died because of lack of interest, which caused thier cart prices to skyrocket. So, neogeo = dead.

Yeah, Chrono trigger was filled with win and awsome, but I found it a little easy unless you beat lavos first try, that's almost impossible.

Like most square games, it's how masochistic you are that determines if you can. If you're willing to brutally battle to level up OVER and OVER again with the same weak enemies, you can do anything.

Anyway hardware weakness is not all that killed NeoGeo. It had a fundamental lack of depth in it's first/second party games. Even when third party developers abandoned nintendo, it's continous line of first and second party games kept it alive. That showed true perseverance which is why I call Nintendo: the gaming world's saviour, the christ that will one day save us from Sony's evil clutches crying

*ahem* But not much of that has to do with in game translucency, so let me just say, that translucency is overrated. Plenty of great looking SNES games don't have it.

PS: Most would probably call me a nintendo fanboy, but that's not true... Nintendo's farts stink too... Like that horrible GBA/GC connectivity problem made fun of in VG cats, or the millions of versions of their hardware they come out with. But sony is far worse. That little DRE time bomb in their PS2 was NOT nice, or them having the most expensive systems, and instead of trying to be creative they just copy other company's ideas (mainly nintendos). Or since Sony is a multi faceted company they try to push the concept of a whole home entertainment system, which is naturally dependant on the other products they sell... Rather than focusing on the gaming aspect. They use the fact that they are 'hip' as an excuse to produce flawed hardware, and their elite team of lawyers keeps the lips of the media sealed tight when there's a scandal that could cause negetive PR are their side.

Unless I'm mistaken a Link to the Past has no transpearencies, it's just pure sprites (Unless you count those curtains at the end, which isn't that big a deal). I beleive the same can be said of street fighter 2, Donkey Kong country, MK 3, super mario world and possibly secret of mana. I haven't played enough Contra to tell if it actually does or doesn't, but whatever floats yer boat.