and to this day I feel the original Mariokart is the worst because of the flat tracks.
Why do people keep saying this when Power Drift and Super Monaco GP have been mentioned? That arcade technology wasn't just used for linear racers.Mode 7 allows much better gameplay. Raster racers are traffic- and obstacle-dodging games more than true racing games. I liked them for being relatively impressive for less capable hardware like the Game Boy, but Mode 7 is the superior technology without question.
Here's a nice article about raster graphics, it should tell you everything you need to know: http://www.extentofthejam.com/pseudo/
It's easier to do physics in mode-7 as the position of the car (or the BG scrolling register values) can be represented as a 2D-vector, in raster graphics racing games you can only move forward most of the time and going around corners is basically like strafing in the original DOOM. Most of the effects that are somehow attributed to raster graphics would work just as fine in mode-7 games if SNES could handle sprite-scaling. I think the tubes and trees alongside Mario Kart's tracks are prescaled (sort of like LODs).
Why do people keep saying this when Power Drift and Super Monaco GP have been mentioned? That arcade technology wasn't just used for linear racers.
Voxel landscape for a racer, what a brilliant idea.Not seen that site for ages
Racin' Force has got to be the pinnacle of visuals in 'mode 7' racers, although it's pushing it to call it that when it's a voxel landscape.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3X0Mjw32CLY
It's a real shame that when base console hardware was finally able to trivially scale, rotate, and skew the perspective of hundreds of large sprites and multiple massive tiled playfields, it coincided with the viability of more advanced 3D making it effectively obsolete to the masses. Sega really drug their feet too long on 'Superscaler'-like home hardware.
Sorry, I missed your reply. I haven't really programmed anything for GBA in almost 15 years so I only have a vague concept left of how exactly all this worked. But in the case of GT Advance 2 it's difficult to see what exactly is used. I tried to stand still on a slope and rotate the camera and the whole track starts warping so I just assumed that they're scaling scanlines on HBLANK to create the hill effect.Mode 7' as in perspective background is a type of raster effect where bg scale and scrolling is tweaked each line. Rolling road games use another type of raster effect for hills and turns, GT Advance 2 and Mountain Bike Rally combine elements of both. There's no need to update tiles for the case of hills in either.
Oh, I loved SCR at the time on my Amiga (favorite racing game ever still) and Hard Drivin' was incredible for its time as was all early wireframe/vector 3D, and even though it was the inevitable future for games and not just the flight/racing gametype, I was always expecting the state of the art arcade experience of the '80s at home for, at least, one console generation and it never really happened.It was obvious as early as the late 80s with titles like Stunt Car Racer or Hard Driving that driving games that actually feel like driving games were not going to be raster based.
Arguably even a decade earlier than that with vector based titles like Vectorbeams Speed Freak or Ataris Star Wars providing more of a feeling of actually moving at speed in a vehicle
Sorry, I missed your reply. I haven't really programmed anything for GBA in almost 15 years so I only have a vague concept left of how exactly all this worked. But in the case of GT Advance 2 it's difficult to see what exactly is used. I tried to stand still on a slope and rotate the camera and the whole track starts warping so I just assumed that they're scaling scanlines on HBLANK to create the hill effect.
I mean turning to drive the other way. I'm not aware of any raster racer where the developer bothered implementing that even if it is theoretically possible.Does Road Rash count? You can run backwards if you fall off your bike. I don't know any where you can look backwards though beyond mirrors.
As GBA has capable sprite scaling quite some racing games essentially combined raster with 3D like use of sprite scaling. Personally I liked Top Gear Rally the best of those: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd0f83wODqgOK I'd been thinking there was something that did attempt to combine rotating backgrounds with raster hills, and I've found at least one example, the GT Advance games
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UvwiSM5uvA
Forget Mode 7; sprite scaling hardware from Segas Arcade division rocked, especially Powerdrift on this circa 1988:
http://segaretro.org/Sega_Y_Board
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=N9L2zN7JeN8
As GBA has capable sprite scaling quite some racing games essentially combined raster with 3D like use of sprite scaling. Personally I liked Top Gear Rally the best of those: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd0f83wODqg
Oh dear, this thread is demanding that I choose...
For arcades, there AFAIK never was a "Mode 7" game that really put the technique to the test with beefy hardware, and game designers were going out of their minds with incredible technical experimentation, so there are plenty of raster-based arcade racers that make me drool even today. At home, though, the limitations of raster engines to represent a fully-mapped racing course were laid more bare, it was a lot of power-sliding to 'simulate' the thrill of racing but not a lot of line-choice or positioning or speed shifting to capture the strategy of driving; unless you were in a master's hands, raster-based racing felt more like steering than driving.
Forget Mode 7; sprite scaling hardware from Segas Arcade division rocked, especially Powerdrift on this circa 1988
I mean turning to drive the other way. I'm not aware of any raster racer where the developer bothered implementing that even if it is theoretically possible.
Those are great, thanks.You can't drive backwards anywhere I can think of, but as I just mentioned, Power Drift spun the world around you in collisions, and had that crazy full 360 fly-over that showed the track and its curves rendered with the sprite elements. I'm not sure what Monaco GP's course allowed you to do wheels-down on the course, but it also got crazy with spin-outs. They're just moving the track elements around in front of you in a perspective that doesn't really work (you get lost in the seams and gaps, and see the flatness of the track elements so clearly as they scroll right on by) but you do at least see the "reverse" of a raster-engine track if you could 180.
https://youtu.be/N9L2zN7JeN8?t=18
https://youtu.be/n1e2hrbSx_k?t=174
Yeah, it has nothing to do with the different business model behind arcade and console and the consequent difference in the cost of hardware and refresh of the technology.Arcades had a much more demanding and older audience vs the SNES kids. So much more effort went into it
Power Drift was bonkers! Not that I understand raster engines, but from what logic I can apply, I still don't understand how it did some of its tricks (already I learned something from the post above.) I remember being really excited because this was scheduled for Atari Lynx at the time (a hotbet of "how can this system be doing this?!" games) but the port never happened
You can't drive backwards anywhere I can think of, but as I just mentioned, Power Drift spun the world around you in collisions, and had that crazy full 360 fly-over that showed the track and its curves rendered with the sprite elements. I'm not sure what Monaco GP's course allowed you to do wheels-down on the course, but it also got crazy with spin-outs. They're just moving the track elements around in front of you in a perspective that doesn't really work (you get lost in the seams and gaps, and see the flatness of the track elements so clearly as they scroll right on by) but you do at least see the "reverse" of a raster-engine track if you could 180.
POWER DRIFT: https://youtu.be/N9L2zN7JeN8?t=18 & https://youtu.be/N9L2zN7JeN8?t=33
MONACO GP: https://youtu.be/n1e2hrbSx_k?t=174
Raster racers were just bouts of straights and turns with no sense of actually being a track. Hell, most of the time you weren't which is why you had games like the Outrun titles where you went "cross country".
They weren't though as the numerous Power Drift examples show. Not only could you often see into the corner, but you would even see elevated structures that you'd later be driving over.
Power Drift imo, does a much better job of feeling like a track than stuff like Mario Kart and F-Zero do. The flatness of those makes any boundaries unconvincing. It looked like you should be able to drive straight over everything in the world.
The way Power Drift works would have been completely compatible with a Mode-7 style textured floor* at ground level though, if they weren't so sprite crazy at Sega.
*just realised having a banking camera angle makes it more complicated than that though
Raster racers forever!
Raster racers were just bouts of straights and turns with no sense of actually being a track. Hell, most of the time you weren't which is why you had games like the Outrun titles where you went "cross country".
Mode 7 racers (before we had actual 3D racers) were always more fun to me. And I enjoyed the hell out of raster racers, so don't get me wrong.
Pushing accelerate doesn't feel like your car is moving but making the background come at you faster.
mode 7 always felt like it delivered a better experience to me.
Did ANYONE play Super Monaco GP for the Mega Drive?
This game combined raster effects, line scrolling, and pseudo scaling fantastically. You had a rear view mirror that showed the full road behind you, as well as cars that you lap, or are coming up quick behind you.
It was obvious as early as the late 80s with titles like Stunt Car Racer or Hard Driving that driving games that actually feel like driving games were not going to be raster based.
Rad Mobile (Sega, 1991)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQqstuDCl4Y
The example was primarily to argue against the idea that the courses are just an unrelated set of turns and straights. A sense of place was perfectly doable in raster racers also (with Super Monaco GP being another common example). And yea, with some sacrifice you could definitely have made something like Power Drift in Mode 7 (though I'm not sure how well some of the overlapping course elements would work)... but I think the flexibility makes it easier for something like Power Drift via raster to combat games like F-Zero or Mario Kart, than it'd be for a Mode 7 game to combat stuff like Outrunners or Rad Mobile.
I will admit that the comparison isn't entirely fair as when citing Mode 7, you're pretty much only going to get SNES games as comparison, whereas for raster there are a lot of examples that would be far more comfortable on something like a Saturn or Neo Geo. But the title is "Mode 7 vs Raster racers", so the games that actually exist are what's going to get contrasted as opposed to what may have existed if Sega wasn't running the arcades with sprite scaling all the way up to Virtua Racing.
Did ANYONE play Super Monaco GP for the Mega Drive?
This game combined raster effects, line scrolling, and pseudo scaling fantastically. You had a rear view mirror that showed the full road behind you, as well as cars that you lap, or are coming up quick behind you. The only system that did it better was the arcade. However the MD version was arguably the better game, because of Grand Prix mode, and the fact that it had over 16 tracks, to the arcade's single track.
Not seen that site for ages
Racin' Force has got to be the pinnacle of visuals in 'mode 7' racers, although it's pushing it to call it that when it's a voxel landscape.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3X0Mjw32CLY
I must admit I did not, and you make a good case that arcade-style speed thrills weren't all that raster-engine graphics could do. You could get complete tracks and design courses for racing-line and speed-throttling strategy.
I can't believe that's a SNES game.
Super Monaco GP on Mega Drive / Genesis was a really good game, however the arcade version absolutely destroys it graphically. The arcade ran on the same superscaler hardware used for After Burner II and Thunder Blade (which are both perfectly ported to 3DS btw). However Super Monaco GP never got an arcade perfect port to any platform anywhere, ever.
Arcade vs MD / Genesis
https://youtu.be/n1e2hrbSx_k?t=1m
Raster feels like your car is on a stick that's stuck in the center of the screen.
I will admit that the comparison isn't entirely fair as when citing Mode 7, you're pretty much only going to get SNES games as comparison, whereas for raster there are a lot of examples that would be far more comfortable on something like a Saturn or Neo Geo. But the title is "Mode 7 vs Raster racers", so the games that actually exist are what's going to get contrasted as opposed to what may have existed if Sega wasn't running the arcades with sprite scaling all the way up to Virtua Racing.
"...feels like your car is on a stick that's stuck in the center of the screen"
How does Mario Kart not feel like that?
In fact I'd argue that raster games feel like LESS of that than Mode 7, because of the aforementioned issues above, that it's more about navigating the track horizontally back and forth avoiding obstacles. Because the tracks aren't represented as a "real" 2D map, raster design tended to emphasize horizontal movement to dodge other vehicles and such.
Vroom/Domark F1 was good for this, especially using mouse x&y to control steering and throttle, you had to line yourself up even on the straights rather than it auto-centering the steering like most raster style games.
I can't believe that's a SNES game.