• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Cool visual effects in 16bit console games.

nkarafo

Member
Speaking of DOOM, the thread lacks some SNES DOOM pics
Doom_SNES_000.png

Can't find any gifs for this version though.

Sure, the game is a lower resolution DOOM and it lacks textures on the ceiling/floor. It also runs at 10-15 fps most of the time with lots of input and sound lag. But even so, i was very impressed seeing the SNES moving those complex level designs that were above any other FPS at the time since most of these games on 16bits looked more like Wolfenstein clones.
 

tuffy

Member
lyUCMH7.gif


NZFWsva.gif


bV6sSRm.gif


These were captured from real hardware apparently and aren't sped up.
I owned this cart (which was quite expensive at the time!). It was one of those things where it was amazing that a game could push so many polygons so quickly on that hardware. But what's less noticeable in the gifs is that all that action near the horizon is very muddled where the AI cars and track details meet. As soon as I saw Daytona USA for Saturn (which wasn't the best of ports in itself), it was hard to go back since it played better and was easier to see what's going on.
 

Peltz

Member
Rayforce baby. It is hella cool. And really good.

it's also called layer section, galactic attack and gunlock.


Here's another gif I made of it a while ago.

Zt9KzxA.gif
I still don't understand how this type of parallax scrolling is possible. There don't appear to be any layers of sprites, and the background looks like all one solid 3D object.

How exactly was this accomplished?
 

angelic

Banned
Speaking of DOOM, the thread lacks some SNES DOOM pics


Can't find any gifs for this version though.

Sure, the game is a lower resolution DOOM and it lacks textures on the ceiling/floor. It also runs at 10-15 fps most of the time with lots of input and sound lag. But even so, i was very impressed seeing the SNES moving those complex level designs that were above any other FPS at the time since most of these games on 16bits looked more like Wolfenstein clones.

SNES doom is absolutely terrible, the enemies dont infight because all of the sprites only face forward..it just isnt doom at all.
 

nkarafo

Member
SNES doom is absolutely terrible, the enemies dont infight because all of the sprites only face forward..it just isnt doom at all.
I actually played the whole game back then... I remember how it felt like a privilege to me playing it without owning a super-expensive 486/66 or something.

Yeah, it wasn't really DOOM... It was mostly just a taste of DOOM but that was enough for me tbh. And it at least tried to be DOOM, with the same level design and all, unlike Duke Nukem on the Genesis which was just a wolfenstein clone.
 

angelic

Banned
I actually played the whole game back then... I remember how it felt like a privilege to me playing it without owning a super-expensive 486/66 or something.

Yeah, it wasn't really DOOM... It was mostly just a taste of DOOM but that was enough for me tbh. And it at least tried to be DOOM, with the same level design and all, unlike Duke Nukem on the Genesis which was just a wolfenstein clone.

I bought a jaguar for it, purely and only for doom - that was my first home taste of it. No spider, no cyberdemon, no music, but still an amazing version.
 

BigMack

Member
V01R7mJ.gif

Also throwing dudes backwards into the windows.

bNTPeQ5.gif


fnZ0c1e.gif


rGVYLsg.gif

Also flipping the grate around to climb around on the back.

Throwing foot soldiers into the screen in TMNT: Turtles in Time.

The minecart sections in both Super Mario RPG and DKC were great effects too.
 

VNZ

Member
I still don't understand how this type of parallax scrolling is possible. There don't appear to be any layers of sprites, and the background looks like all one solid 3D object.

How exactly was this accomplished?
Linescrolling. The horizontal (in this case vertical in practice, since the screen is tilted to tate orientation) position of background layers are updated for each line of the screen. Basically the recipe for all full screen effects of the era; you can achieve all kinds of distortion, depth, pseudo 3D, etc, effects by updating different graphics registers with each new scan line. Krejlooc has explained it several times in this thread already, actually.

The cool thing with vertical shooters is that they give the opportunity for new effects with the same technique, since the CRT beam scans vertically.
 

Lord Error

Insane For Sony
I would say that is interlaced mode + deflickering filter.
That's a very good guess. I can't remember anymore because it's been so long since I last played it, but it is entirely possible that Perihelion was in fact running in 320x512 interlaced resolution, the images that look like they are higher resolution look that way because they in fact are - deflickered high res images.

BUT, if that was the case, I would imagine the vertical resolution on those concentric circles would appear higher than its horizontal resolution.
 
lyUCMH7.gif


NZFWsva.gif


bV6sSRm.gif


These were captured from real hardware apparently and aren't sped up.

Wait, I thought Virtua Racing also had extra chips inside the cartridge (which I thought was why it was so expensive back then) - so similar to the Super FX chip, it's not quite 'just native hardware', there's also extra chips there that the console interacts with in order to render that stuff.
 

Celine

Member
Speaking of "tricks", the Art of Fighting port for PC Engine by Hudson kept the zoom function although in a rudimentary way by simply switching the resolution on the fly.
 

Lord Error

Insane For Sony
Rayforce baby. It is hella cool. And really good.

it's also called layer section, galactic attack and gunlock.

Here's another gif I made of it a while ago.

Zt9KzxA.gif
This is from the Saturn version, right? I've just seen a video of the arcade version, and while this effect is there, it doesn't look anywhere near this colorful and nice.
 

dogen

Member
This is from the Saturn version, right? I've just seen a video of the arcade version, and while this effect is there, it doesn't look anywhere near this colorful and nice.

Yes it's the saturn version, but that's offscreen footage and from youtube. I haven't played the saturn version in a few years but arcade footage does look a bit washed out to me.
 

Krejlooc

Banned
I see, very interesting. So when you say all present, was it pulling the samples off the disc each time (which I would assume prohibitively slow) or did it have more ram to store the sounds (while playing the redbook audio I presume it can't be loading at the same time). great contributions mate, love the thread.

During the fights, and thus whenever they'd be playing voice samples, the drive is already in use to stream the redbook audio. The speech samples are stored in ram, which are loaded before the round, so they play instantly.
 

Krejlooc

Banned
I think the game has some standard/generic 2D brawler sections.

Wasnt it the megadrive game placed between the cd batmobile sections?

Then why the hell isn't it called "Batman and Robin's Racing Adventures"?

There are no brawling sections, it's all driving.

It's called "The Adventures of Batman & Robin" because it has a full, unique episode of Batman & Robin created specifically for this game, using the voices and animators from the show. Fans of Batman TAS call these scenes from the game "the lost episode" because they were created specifically from the game, and not taken from any episodes.
 

lazygecko

Member
Overexaggerated scrolling cloud layers appreciation time

The Incredible Hulk

povlGxb.gif


McDonald's Treasure Land Adventure

brJPDAe.gif


Sparkster

J5QZqTK.gif


Monster World IV

IWm4XV9.gif
 

eso76

Member
1083839828.jpg


This was one of the first games to use this effect, I think ?

Well, actually isn't it basically the same technique old racing games used to render the road and having it scroll laterally in perspective?
 

nkarafo

Member
There are no brawling sections, it's all driving.

It's called "The Adventures of Batman & Robin" because it has a full, unique episode of Batman & Robin created specifically for this game, using the voices and animators from the show. Fans of Batman TAS call these scenes from the game "the lost episode" because they were created specifically from the game, and not taken from any episodes.
I got it confused with Batman Returns, which also has similar driving sections

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMc0IDbkzCs
 
Star Fox and stunt race FX gifs get posted all the time, but what really deserves recognition is Virtua Racing on the Genesis. It gets overshadowed by the great 32X version, but considering the hardware, Virtua Racing is an incredible port. And it pushes way, way more polygons than anything else of that time.

Virtual Racing on MegaDrive was truly one of those mindblowing moments of my gaming life. I had to spent hours convincing my fathers to buy such an expensive cartridge but it was totally worth it.
 

Soltype

Member
This is from the Saturn version, right? I've just seen a video of the arcade version, and while this effect is there, it doesn't look anywhere near this colorful and nice.

Yes it's the saturn version, but that's offscreen footage and from youtube. I haven't played the saturn version in a few years but arcade footage does look a bit washed out to me.
l41YtyVy7wD1GWXHW.gif
l41Yh1m6jMt4wY1tm.gif



These 2 are from the arcade version.
 

angelic

Banned
During the fights, and thus whenever they'd be playing voice samples, the drive is already in use to stream the redbook audio. The speech samples are stored in ram, which are loaded before the round, so they play instantly.

this is what im getting at though, the megadrive doesnt have enough ram, so does the sega cd add a pool of ram to it?
 

Alric

Member
Since i've seen some fighters in here I'll post a few I really liked.

Weaponlord - SNES / GEN

tumblr_mlo96wlHiS1qd4q8ao1_500.gif



Eternal Champions - GEN / Sega CD

tumblr_luoya6gcXq1qfa1jdo1_r1_500.gif
 

lazygecko

Member
Eternal Champions really has the best gore of the era. Completely hand-made, intricately designed pixelart gore which makes Mortal Kombat look really cheap and pedestrian photoshop work by comparison

300px-eternal_champiogessy.gif


tumblr_n0a9npsdkw1r21kosty.gif


Sadly the full overkill gifs from Whips Ass Gaming no longer seem to be there.
 

optimiss

Junior Member
Yes, I want to know how the hell that effect in the *images* was produced, because the game looks different. As in your screenshots the pixels are "square".

See this enlargement:

o002CMG.jpg


These two are taken from the above image, they are the exact same sprite. On the right you see what the game looks like, on the left you see this weird dithering that I think looks exceptionally good. Instead of using that default matrix of a big square made by four pixels, it instead uses a 1x2 pixels kind of cell, with two horizontal pixels one next to the other.

I wonder how the hell it was achieved, because it's the best dithering effect I've seen and it greatly improves the look (outside of blurry text).

It seems more like filtering than dithering, but I am no expert.
 
I think the game has some standard/generic 2D brawler sections.

Batman Returns on the Sega CD has platforming sections from the Sega Genesis game and additional driving sections for the Sega CD port. Though the driving section could be played separately from the platforming section and the same goes for the platforming section. Of there is the option to play both sections together as one whole.

Adventures of Batman and Robin on the Sega CD was just a driving game with cut scenes that were storyboarded and animated by Warner Bros animation and based off the '90s animated series. The game itself was designed by some of the people that worked on the driving sections in the Sega CD port of Batman Returns.

The Sega Genesis version of Adventures of Batman and Robin was developed by a group called Clockwork Tortoise and was essentially a run and gun styled shooter with a Batman theme.

The SNES version of The Adventures of Batman and Robin was developed by Konami, and features a wide variety of different gameplay styles and each level was like its own mini game.

Then there is also a version of Batman Returns for the SNES that was also designed by Konami (gifs are in this thread) and was based on their beat-em-up template that they used for other games like the Ninja Turtles beat em ups and the Simpsons arcade game.


Then why the hell isn't it called "Batman and Robin's Racing Adventures"?

Also, it still looks like fun.

Also, now I wish I had the Genesis version too.

To me the biggest strike against the Sega CD version of Batman and and Robin is that the game is a bit too unforgivingly hard at times. But it is a great looking game on the Sega CD that showcases the systems scaling abilities really well, and even has a lot of good looking pixel art. The animated cutscenes are a nice treat as well, and were created just for this game. They were animated by the same group that did Batman: TAS.

But the same thing can also be said about the Genesis game, as it is frustratingly hard as well. The game itself is pure eye candy from a Genesis point of view.
 

Krejlooc

Banned
this is what im getting at though, the megadrive doesnt have enough ram, so does the sega cd add a pool of ram to it?

Let's clarify - The Sega Genesis doesn't have ram at all as you're describing it. It has, say, CRAM for palette entries, but not the conventional ram you're imagining. The sega genesis addresses the entire cartridge slot and can access any piece of the cartridge itself.

The Sega CD itself interfaces with the Sega Genesis through a cartridge slot - there are two cart slots on the Genesis. One on the top, and one on the side. If you were to build a male->female edgeslot converter, you could actually plug sega genesis cartridges into the side of your genesis, avoiding the top slot, and they'd boot.

The Sega CD has 6Mbit of ram for program data, graphics, and sound, plus an additional 512 Kb just for PCM samples. To give a comparison for how big this is, the entirety of Sonic the Hedgehog on the Sega Genesis is 4 Mb big.

This means, for any given moment after loading on the Sega CD, you have access to what amounts to the entirety of Sonic 1 + another half of Sonic 1 to work with. The nature of a CD console is that you don't have to load everything needed at one time - that's what load screens are for. So, where MK1 on the Genesis (8 Mb) had to contain all the art, program data, and sound for every single fighter and background in the entire game in 8 Mb, the Sega CD version can devote 6 Mb to a single stage and 2 fighters at once, out of a much larger pool of 650 MB (capital B, not lowercase B).
 

nkarafo

Member
Holy shit at those Eternal Champions gifs and videos.

I knew the game was violent and that it had fatalities but i don't think i ever saw one until now, lol.

This is nothing like those cheesy MK fatalities.
 

Tain

Member
The Sega CD itself interfaces with the Sega Genesis through a cartridge slot - there are two cart slots on the Genesis. One on the top, and one on the side. If you were to build a male->female edgeslot converter, you could actually plug sega genesis cartridges into the side of your genesis, avoiding the top slot, and they'd boot.

That's pretty wild.
 

angelic

Banned
Let's clarify - The Sega Genesis doesn't have ram at all as you're describing it. It has, say, CRAM for palette entries, but not the conventional ram you're imagining. The sega genesis addresses the entire cartridge slot and can access any piece of the cartridge itself.

The Sega CD itself interfaces with the Sega Genesis through a cartridge slot - there are two cart slots on the Genesis. One on the top, and one on the side. If you were to build a male->female edgeslot converter, you could actually plug sega genesis cartridges into the side of your genesis, avoiding the top slot, and they'd boot.

The Sega CD has 6Mbit of ram for program data, graphics, and sound, plus an additional 512 Kb just for PCM samples. To give a comparison for how big this is, the entirety of Sonic the Hedgehog on the Sega Genesis is 4 Mb big.

This means, for any given moment after loading on the Sega CD, you have access to what amounts to the entirety of Sonic 1 + another half of Sonic 1 to work with. The nature of a CD console is that you don't have to load everything needed at one time - that's what load screens are for. So, where MK1 on the Genesis (8 Mb) had to contain all the art, program data, and sound for every single fighter and background in the entire game in 8 Mb, the Sega CD version can devote 6 Mb to a single stage and 2 fighters at once, out of a much larger pool of 650 MB (capital B, not lowercase B).

awesome, thanks man, appreciate the trouble.
 

Raptomex

Member
so the coolest thing about this right here is how they trick you into feeling like it's doing 4 independent line scroll segments of the screen at once, when it's really only ever doing 2 at the most. What happens is they count hblank interrupts until they get to the portion of the screen they want to work on, then line scroll that portion to create the perspective of the side of the building. There are 3 buildings, but you never go above the top building or below the bottom, so there are only 4 faces ever considered - the bottom face of the top building, the top or bottom face of the bottom building, and the top face of the bottom building. But because of the way the middle building is placed in the middle of the screen, you can't see both of its sides at once, and the roof portion of the middle building is just wide enough that you can't see both the top and bottom buildings at the same time.
You're ruining the magic.

very informative. Awesome.
 

Krejlooc

Banned
That's pretty wild.

The genesis has 2 regions of addressable space that are 4 Mb each back to back. When you plug in one cart, it will address from 0x000000 - 0x3FFFFF, and can address 0x400000 - 0x7FFFFF if no CD is present. Both regions are separate from each other.

This is how Sonic 3 & Knuckles works, actually. Lock-On Technology is the Genesis addressing two carts at once - Sonic & Knuckles gets addressed up to 0x3FFFFF and Sonic 3 gets addressed to 0x7FFFFF. When you run Sonic 3 & Knuckles, the actual program execution is from Sonic & Knuckles, which knows to looks for Sonic 3 assets between 0x400000 and 0x7FFFFF instead of 0x000000 - 0x3FFFFF.

When a Sega CD is inserted, it addresses both regions.

This is why Sega's claim that they couldn't get Lock-On technology emulation working on the Wii, PS3, and Xbox 360 last generation was seen as an enormous joke to the hacking community - there is no "lock-on technology emulation." It's not a real technology to emulate. Want to lock Sonic 3 onto Sonic & Knuckles? Literally all you have to do is copy Sonic 3 to the end of Sonic & Knuckles. You can do it with a text editor.
 

piggychan

Member
These 2 are from the arcade version.

I wished I had kept this game Galactic Attack/Layer Section for the Sega Saturn but it was a time when polygons were becoming more popular and 2D stuff was not cool anymore..

I think there were similar effects used in cotton 2 and twin bee yahho but not as dramatic as these but they are on 32 bit systems.

I think Detana twin bee/bells & Whistles was on 16 bit arcade hardware

mZVmYn.gif


XDAv5o.gif


pc engine version
yPOBwg.gif
 

petran79

Banned
Adventures of Batman and Robin on the Sega CD was just a driving game with cut scenes that were storyboarded and animated by Warner Bros animation and based off the '90s animated series. The game itself was designed by some of the people that worked on the driving sections in the Sega CD port of Batman Returns.
.

Reminds me of the wasted potential of the SegaCD game of Cadillacs and Dinosaurs. The TV series, which was animated in Japan btw (Studio A.P.P.P.), was one of the best back then.

Original comics and arcade game were also very good
 
Let's clarify - The Sega Genesis doesn't have ram at all as you're describing it. It has, say, CRAM for palette entries, but not the conventional ram you're imagining. The sega genesis addresses the entire cartridge slot and can access any piece of the cartridge itself.

Wait? Not, not at all.

Megadrive has 64kb of main RAM and 64KB of VRAM.Then 8KB of RAM for Z80 and some others specific RAMs like CRAM. You can't make anything without a working RAM.

Funny part about it is main RAM uses PSRAM, just as fast as the VRAM. It's like 1988's OHMYGADGDDR5!


The Sega CD has 6Mbit of ram for program data, graphics, and sound, plus an additional 512 Kb just for PCM samples. To give a comparison for how big this is, the entirety of Sonic the Hedgehog on the Sega Genesis is 4 Mb big.

Wikipedia is wrong.

MegaCD main ram is 512KB, VRAM is 256KB, 64KB of sound RAM, 16KB for CD cache and 8KB for backup RAM. It has as much sound RAM as SNES but just for samples.
 

FyreWulff

Member
The genesis has 2 regions of addressable space that are 4 Mb each back to back. When you plug in one cart, it will address from 0x000000 - 0x3FFFFF, and can address 0x400000 - 0x7FFFFF if no CD is present. Both regions are separate from each other.

This is how Sonic 3 & Knuckles works, actually. Lock-On Technology is the Genesis addressing two carts at once - Sonic & Knuckles gets addressed up to 0x3FFFFF and Sonic 3 gets addressed to 0x7FFFFF. When you run Sonic 3 & Knuckles, the actual program execution is from Sonic & Knuckles, which knows to looks for Sonic 3 assets between 0x400000 and 0x7FFFFF instead of 0x000000 - 0x3FFFFF.

When a Sega CD is inserted, it addresses both regions.

This is why Sega's claim that they couldn't get Lock-On technology emulation working on the Wii, PS3, and Xbox 360 last generation was seen as an enormous joke to the hacking community - there is no "lock-on technology emulation." It's not a real technology to emulate. Want to lock Sonic 3 onto Sonic & Knuckles? Literally all you have to do is copy Sonic 3 to the end of Sonic & Knuckles. You can do it with a text editor.

I was about to ask if you could get S3&K to work by plugging each cart into each cartridge slot (with one adapted to connect). Neato.
 

Krejlooc

Banned
Wait? Not, not at all.

Megadrive has 64kb of main RAM and 64KB of VRAM.Then 8KB of RAM for Z80 and some others specific RAMs like CRAM. You can't make anything without a working RAM.

Funny part about it is main RAM uses PSRAM, just as fast as the VRAM. It's like 1988's OHMYGADGDDR5!

...you just said the exact same thing I said, more verbosely. Individual components have RAM, like CRAM, but it's not a contiguous piece of ram, and you do not load music into the 64kb of ram. The cart is fully addressable.

Wikipedia is wrong.

MegaCD main ram is 512KB, VRAM is 256KB, 64KB of sound RAM

512KB is 4 Mb. 256KB is 2 Mb. 4Mb + 2 Mb = 6 Mb. 64 KB is 512 Kb.

Uhhhhhhh.....
 

Lord Error

Insane For Sony
Yes it's the saturn version, but that's offscreen footage and from youtube. I haven't played the saturn version in a few years but arcade footage does look a bit washed out to me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRHtJK8zDCc&t=3m50s Looks pretty much the same here to me outside of brightness/saturation, imo.
I've checked the game on Saturn emulator now, I have to say it really looks much nicer and more striking on Saturn than the arcade. Yes, the effect is the same, but the colors look much nicer. The pattern looks more like a burning lava. I don't know if the arcade had some palette limit on the colors used, and Saturn didn't or if it was just an art direction change, but it was IMO for the better.

Does anyone have this game on iOS? Does it work with iOS9?
 
Top Bottom