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[Warm Machine]

Genesis destroys SNES for TV output if you're using RGB.

The RGB output on the Genesis is glorious.

I believe you. But I never saw an official cable for it or a monitor that supported in until the mid 90s. I wish Sega released an official S-Video cable.

 

[Easy_D]

I think that Batman & Robin game on the Mega Drive (The one with the booming Jesper Kyd techno soundtrack) should settle any debates.

 

[Mindman]

I believe you. But I never saw an official cable for it or a monitor that supported in until the mid 90s. I wish Sega released an official S-Video cable.

What would explain why RF output on the Genesis looked worse than RF on SNES? The Genesis had some sort of artifacting and it wasn't dithering. Anyone know what I mean?

 

[GavinUK86]

I think that Batman & Robin game on the Mega Drive (The one with the booming Jesper Kyd techno soundtrack) should settle any debates.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onFnV_swG2I

 

[Krejlooc]

I think that Batman & Robin game on the Mega Drive (The one with the booming Jesper Kyd techno soundtrack) should settle any debates.

Yessir

It is everything great about the genesis all at once. Sick visual effects, great synth soundtrack, and brutal "one more time" gameplay.

 

[nordique]

Oh man that First page confused me


I would go with Snes.

 

[Trojan]

I think I understand what happened in this thread....if so then there are some hilarious responses here. Never end, console wars lol

 

[Cute Dragon Here]

Yessir

It is everything great about the genesis all at once. Sick visual effects, great synth soundtrack, and brutal "one more time" gameplay.

Hehe. The Genesis appeal is definitely different.

It kind of also shows that the SNES seems to be unusually suited for RPGs.

 

[lazygecko]

Batman & Robin is probably the most technically impressive 16-bit game period. There are other games that do individual facets better, but as a complete package it's hard to find something that trumps it.

 

[AmyS]

SNES definitely more powerful than Genesis graphically.

128 sprites vs 80
4 background layers vs 2
256 colors on-screen out of 32,768 total colors vs 64 / 512
scaling, rotation, transparency and other 'mode 7' effects vs none

Genesis' only real advantage was a much faster CPU

I was a big fan of Sega and Genesis, not so much of Nintendo and SNES, but facts are facts.

Also, some fascinating stuff about Super Famicom's development environment and emulation. Most of which I don't really understand but some might appreciate it.

Please excuse the length.

1999/06/30

-- Silhouette History --

Silhouette is the product of internal Nintendo research over several years. In my opinion, the history of Silhouette is nothing short of fascinating, so please read this document at least once before you throw it in the trash. Originally developed under the code-name "Mirage" and designed to serve as a Super Famicom development environment, Silhouette has been modified into a working Super Nintendo emulation environment which rivals the best efforts of any public development. Adequate explanation of Silhouette requires a step back to the original days of Super Famicom development.

The first batch of games for the Super Famicom were developed around 1988 and 1989. Popular Super Famicom titles, like F-Zero and Super Mario World, were the most difficult for several reasons--if nothing else, the Super Famicom hardware specifications changed in small ways at least twice during the development project, requiring changes to existing code. (Trivia tidbit: the original Super Famicom plans called for much more extensive onboard 3D hardware--PilotWings was developed assuming that this hardware would be present, and since this chip was scrapped from the Super Famicom at the last minute, Nintendo was forced to include this 3D chip on the PilotWings board in order to keep the game on schedule.)

The other reason for difficulty in development is much less known, and very surprising--almost all the programming for these titles was done on the Apple IIgs! This seems ridiculous until you realize that both the Super Famicom and the Apple IIgs are based on the 65816 processor, a cheap toy with inadequate processing power that was stuck in the Super Famicom to smooth over the early development process (since it is backwards compatible with the 6502, the NES' processor). However, it was soon realized by the development teams that a reliable 65c816 development platform could not be found on the usual Nintendo platforms (most Nintendo devs at that time had a generic PC, excluding the art and marketing department which was mostly Macintosh and a few segments of the development team). Deadlines approaching, the Apple IIgs was chosen as a quick if inelegant solution--several C and assembly compilers were available, and testing and debugging was easier since we were able to use a native 65816 for testing.

However, the IIgs proved woefully inadequate for large projects. Most machines didn't even have hard drives! Compile times for even meager projects were horrendous, and keeping all the work on floppies was getting out of hand. And obviously, the graphics support on IIgs' was minimal, so testing out small programs required switching between a Super Fami prototype on the left and a IIgs on the right. Programmers, in general, hated the thought of Super Famicom development. Many continued to write 6502 code using the old NES development environment, choosing to ignore on the 16-bit advantages of the 65816 in order to complete the project without losing their sanity.

Nintendo soon pushed its efforts hard into developing a reasonable development platform for Super Famicom (and soon, the Super Nintendo). The project was codenamed Mirage, and several of the key designers of the Super Fami hardware were assigned to the project. Along with full 65c816 emulation, interrupt timing and memory management, the Mirage dev platform offered realtime debugging, code stepping, breakpoints, limited video support and almost instant compile times. Developers were happy, and Mirage proved to be an excellent way to write Super Famicom software in record times.

At first, Mirage was anything but a traditional emulator--the video consisted of squares on a black background (showing where sprites would be) and pages of debugging information. It did not run in real-time, there was no controller interface, no SPC700 chip emulation (required for sound), a text-based user interface. It was meant for programmers and used for writing code. Final testing was done on a real Super Fami
unit.

However, over time, the Mirage project got more advanced. Of course, bugfix after bugfix was added, patching the code to make sure its output matched that of a real Super Fami. A team working on some tricky graphical effects added the first major patch, a separate window (originally forced onto a second monitor) which would render a virtual SNES screen. This process took several seconds on our original hardware--one could watch the screen slowly draw from top to bottom--but it worked, and it was more accurate than most of the emulators you see today. A second team optimized the code, and combined with computer upgrades around the Nintendo offices, this let Mirage run in pseudo-realtime, although it was a fraction of the speed of a real Super Famicom.

It soon became common to test games on Mirage more and more extensively. Developers found that the time needed to load their code from Mirage into the testing units (up to a minute for large games) was excessive, when with a click of the mouse they were able to immediately see the game running within Mirage. Of course, there were a lot of limitations, and nobody would argue that Mirage could replace a real unit, but it was a start.

This is where the story gets interesting. In late 1996, a high-level executive (who will remain anonymous) at Nintendo came to the Rare labs one day, and saw a coder working on his game using Mirage. (Trivia tidbit: Yes, Rare has many of its development labs within Nintendo of America headquarters nowadays--they were always in bed together, now more recently they've even shacked up. Diddy Kong Racing--shudder.) By
now, computer hardware had advanced to allow Mirage to run at playable speeds on this guy's average desktop hardware. Suddenly the potential struck him--Super Nintendo games on household PCs! Obviously there's a market.

Nintendo of Japan shrugged off the idea, but they always have--NOJ is known for passing over potentially valuable markets, and focusing on selling elaborate junk to young children (Virtual Boy, anyone?). On the other hand, Nintendo 64 has not been the blockbuster that was hoped for in the US market; obviously the higher-ups overestimated the market for $79 games designed for kids when competing systems sell their games for $39. Regardless, the project Silhouette was spun off from Mirage in an attempt to broaden Nintendo's market to PC owners, especially those who liked SNES software. Silhouette had two main developers, myself being one of them; the Mirage team also worked on large portions. Silhouette was designed to be a subset of Mirage; its purpose was to play games, and be as optimized as possible for today's computer hardware, but be as accurate as possible. No debugging windows, no test modes, no compiler--just the emulated hardware, with the best possible gaming experience. Every attempt was made in Silhouette's course of development to obtain speed without sacrificing compatibility.

In many cases Silhouette was forced to expand to include features that Mirage did not cope with. For example, Mirage had no sound support whatsoever--Silhouette includes a full SPC700 APU emulator, designed by myself and my partner from the ground up. Original versions of Silhouette also included an encryption scheme to prevent customers from hacking the software and using ROM images other than the game included with the emulator; the version you have does not include this encryption, however.

An interesting note is that most employees at Nintendo had no idea that other people had already thought of SNES emulation until very recently. The entire SNES9X cancellation story is a huge mess of bad PR for Nintendo, but it couldn't be helped--if a Super Nintendo emulator were released as freeware (along with the heavy ROM piracy that is characteristic of the Internet), the market for Silhouette would be slim to none. Nintendo's efforts in combatting ROM image piracy have always been swift and effective, and frankly I feel nothing but satisfaction seeing ROM pirates get shut down. Try watching your colleague's or friend's hours and hours of labor get translated into a ZIP file and get spread across the Internet and see how it makes you feel. Piracy sucks, people--don't use Silhouette as a vehicle for piracy.

Unfortunately, as you can see, Silhouette did not make it into stores nationwide as planned. Within the past few months, Nintendo of America has undergone some extensive reorganizations and layoffs. Much of the blame for this rests with the current state of N64 sales (let's just say we're not doing so well; Sony destroyed us this Christmas). The high-level executive who brainstormed Silhouette lost his job in the red tape. After that, it was only a matter of time before the word came down from NOJ to axe the Silhouette project, still unfinished. That ended my career at Nintendo, since Silhouette had been my only major project at Nintendo for several months and I had nothing to do after the project was gone. I packed my bags and made sure to get a copy of Silhouette on Zip disk before taking off.

I'm pretty sure that Silhouette is dead at Nintendo. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if they denied that it ever existed, at this point. But let the facts speak for themselves--here's Silhouette, now on your hard drive. Have fun. Due to the facts behind this program's development, and the confidential nature of Silhouette, my colleague and I chose to release Silhouette only under anonymity.

Most of all, please enjoy Silhouette! It's got a lot of hard hours of work invested into it, and although I know there's a lot of rough edges--transparency masking, for example, is all wrong, and the SPC700 really needed a little more testing--it really is the best out there. Special thanks to whoever drew these icons--I lifted them off another emulator in haste, since I am not an artist.

Future versions of Silhouette may emerge from time to time. No promises, and no release dates--I have already gotten myself a new job where I'm extremely happy, but the days are long and you can only program for so many hours in a day. Have fun, and thanks for trying Silhouette!

https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl...es.video.marketplace/KYuRpH1Tb-Q/yw64qPLeoisJ

 

[stan423321]

According to Nocash, there are ~80 licensed SNES games using enhancement chips out of ~2000. So, this wasn't really normal, especially if you take a look at what some of those chips were used for.

 

[Cute Dragon Here]

According to Nocash, there are ~80 licensed SNES games using enhancement chips out of ~2000. So, this wasn't really normal, especially if you take a look at what some of those chips were used for.

How about "the amount of high-profile enhanced games"?

Personally, I think games including enhancement chips of any kind should still be considered "native hardware" - as far as the end user is concerned, it's another game cartridge to be inserted. This goes for both sides - in fact, every system is considered the same...

 

[Krejlooc]

Batman & Robin is probably the most technically impressive 16-bit game period. There are other games that do individual facets better, but as a complete package it's hard to find something that trumps it.

I give that award to alien soldier, the greatest 16 bit action game of all time

 

[lukeskymac]

Is this a joke? I would hope by now that everybody knows that almost all TLoU cutscenes on PS3 do not use in game models and textures and are all videos and not rendered in real-time on the PS3. So If you wanna post TLoU shots to showcase what the PS3 can do then post in-game shots because posting a pic of a video is just sad.

That's not from any cutscene, just a PR shot with extra anti-aliasing thrown in. Try again, salty man.

 

[Soltype]

Batman & Robin is probably the most technically impressive 16-bit game period. There are other games that do individual facets better, but as a complete package it's hard to find something that trumps it.

It's truly a spectacle.It looks incredible, it sounds amazing, and it's a pretty good game too.

I give that award to alien soldier, the greatest 16 bit action game of all time

 

[Rising_Hei]

Wasn't GBA's sound crappy compared to SNES' because most of the games with great sounds we remember used dedicated chips on the cartridge for it?

Also i remember that nintendo has always been secretive with 3rd parties about how to make the best use of their hardware, so nintendo games could keep having the advantage above the rest, and i think SEGA wasn't that bad with the 3rds so there wasn't much practical gap in the end, imo.

Resolution goes to Genesis
Processor goes to Genesis
Colors on screen go to SNES.
Sound goes to SNES.
TV output goes to SNES

Xbox 360 did everything better than PS3 except for sound.

Jo, just no and i don't even need to elaborate.

 

[lazygecko]

Wasn't GBA's sound crappy compared to SNES' because most of the games with great sounds we remember used dedicated chips on the cartridge for it?

Barring the Virtual Boy (God do we need a hipster scene for VB chiptunes), no post-SNES Nintendo hardware used any dedicated sound chips. It was all handled on the software side, thus having to share resources with all other game aspects, and most devs just aren't going to prioritize sound. That's not inherently a bad thing since on the other hand you aren't really limited by the ceiling dictated by chip specs, so you could theoretically do something like 16-32 channels with high quality samples on the GBA. Problem is that this is all still going to be bottlenecked by the poor quality DAC on the system. Everything just sounds fuzzy/noisy and with bad frequency response.

 

[Kysuke]

am I the only that came in here expecting a SNES vs Genesis thread?

 

[televator]

Resolution goes to Genesis
Processor goes to Genesis
Colors on screen go to SNES.
Sound goes to SNES.
TV output goes to SNES

Xbox 360 did everything better than PS3 except for sound.

I say the audio is more a matter of preference. I'll take FM Synth any day. Like it was pointed out the MegaDrive had the advantage in video output, but it depended on your region. In NA we were stuck with composhit.

Also the PS3 pushed more bleeding edge console graphics in exclusives. Naughty Dog, Insomniac, and Guerilla Games showed that the PS3 had an edge... as long as a dev had the resources to put the Cell to work. Finally, didn't the X360 have a slight black crush?

 

[Lettuce]

This game just sealed the death of the MegaDrive technically and it was a launch game.....

I mean just look at it!, has everything scaling, rotating, transparency, and all those lovely vivid colours on screen and the audio from this game was just another level, the MegaDrive could never hope to compete with such a display of technical power.

As said the only thing that let the SNES down was the CPU choice and maybe the sample rate of the audio chip they used. Always wondered why Nintendo decide to go for a slower clock speed CPU than the 2 year old MegaDrive and why the just didn't select the same CPU as the MD surely would have been cheaper and gave better performance

 

[Malitik Sabu]

SNES definitely more powerful than Genesis graphically.

128 sprites vs 80
4 background layers vs 2
256 colors on-screen out of 32,768 total colors vs 64 / 512
scaling, rotation, transparency and other 'mode 7' effects vs none

Genesis' only real advantage was a much faster CPU

I was a big fan of Sega and Genesis, not so much of Nintendo and SNES, but facts are facts.

Also, some fascinating stuff about Super Famicom's development environment and emulation. Most of which I don't really understand but some might appreciate it.

Please excuse the length.







https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl...es.video.marketplace/KYuRpH1Tb-Q/yw64qPLeoisJ

Except this is on paper, the SNES pretty much reliable on cartridge expanded hardware from day 1. Games that don't seem to use it don't lookt hat good, and really only seem to excel over Genesis games in color.

 

[Journey]

I say the audio is more a matter of preference. I'll take FM Synth any day. Like it was pointed out the MegaDrive had the advantage in video output, but it depended on your region. In NA we were stuck with composhit.

Also the PS3 pushed more bleeding edge console graphics in exclusives. Naughty Dog, Insomniac, and Guerilla Games showed that the PS3 had an edge... as long as a dev had the resources to put the Cell to work. Finally, didn't the X360 have a slight black crush?

So if hypothetically, Ryse was the best looking game so far this generation, will you say Xbox One is more powerful while ignoring all of the facts on paper and all of the ports running at higher resolution and better texture quality/better AA solution? No, the answer would quickly be, if Ryse was made for PS4, it would look or run better.

Most 360 ports did exactly that, run at higher res, nicer assets and used the better AA solution vs PS3's low tier Quincunx AA. Even at the very end of the generation when developers were harnessing everything possible out of the PS3 architecture, 360 games were still winning head to heads. I don't get the exclusives argument, if the best looking games today was exclusive to Xbox One, it doesn't automatically make it the more powerful console, it just means we'll never know what this level of talent/budget would be able to achieve on the PS4.

 

[Celine]

Are there any games still coming to the SNES? I don't mean official ones but rather ones that enthusiasts make. Im pretty sure that Dreamcast had one not too long ago and thought that the SNES might be getting them too.

It would be interesting to see the tricks that the devs could do now.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=771623

Out of curiosity, I sometime do wonder about whether there existed SNES games that also made use of the said screen property. (I'm feeling it's a "yes" too. Don't know if that's really the case, too.)

I think Kirby 3 translucent look was due to the CRT blur.
Example:

As for dithering on character sprites I can't think of any example on SNES at the moment...

 

[Malitik Sabu]

So if hypothetically, Ryse was the best looking game so far this generation, will you say Xbox One is more powerful while ignoring all of the facts on paper and all of the ports running at higher resolution and better texture quality/better AA solution? No, the answer would quickly be, if Ryse was made for PS4, it would look or run better.

Most 360 ports did exactly that, run at higher res, nicer assets and used the better AA solution vs PS3's low tier Quincunx AA. Even at the very end of the generation when developers were harnessing everything possible out of the PS3 architecture, 360 games were still winning head to heads. I don't get the exclusives argument, if the best looking games today was exclusive to Xbox One, it doesn't automatically make it the more powerful console, it just means we'll never know what this level of talent/budget would be able to achieve on the PS4.

Unless the power of the more powerful consoles on paper s bottled and can't fully be archived (N64)

 

[dark10x]

SNES definitely more powerful than Genesis graphically.

128 sprites vs 80
4 background layers vs 2
256 colors on-screen out of 32,768 total colors vs 64 / 512
scaling, rotation, transparency and other 'mode 7' effects vs none

Genesis' only real advantage was a much faster CPU

I was a big fan of Sega and Genesis, not so much of Nintendo and SNES, but facts are facts.

Also, some fascinating stuff about Super Famicom's development environment and emulation. Most of which I don't really understand but some might appreciate it.

Those things didn't always pan out in practice. Parallax scrolling, for instance, was often executed better on Genesis with many more layers of visible depth. It was trickery like everything else back then but it was the reality. So many Snes games seem to rely on single flat backgrounds scrolling independently of the foreground. Line scrolling wasn't as common.

The Genesis was also seemingly able to throw around sprites with fewer performance issues.

 

[Malitik Sabu]

This game just sealed the death of the MegaDrive technically and it was a launch game.....

I mean just look at it!, has everything scaling, rotating, transparency, and all those lovely vivid colours on screen and the audio from this game was just another level, the MegaDrive could never hope to compete with such a display of technical power.

As said the only thing that let the SNES down was the CPU choice and maybe the sample rate of the audio chip they used. Always wondered why Nintendo decide to go for a slower clock speed CPU than the 2 year old MegaDrive and why the just didn't select the same CPU as the MD surely would have been cheaper and gave better performance

None of which the SNES itself did, it had expanded ROM chips in the cartridge to do that. It's like comparing Sonic 1 to Starfox.

 

[Tain]

SNES definitely more powerful than Genesis graphically.

128 sprites vs 80
4 background layers vs 2
256 colors on-screen out of 32,768 total colors vs 64 / 512
scaling, rotation, transparency and other 'mode 7' effects vs none

Genesis' only real advantage was a much faster CPU

I was a big fan of Sega and Genesis, not so much of Nintendo and SNES, but facts are facts.

The CPU advantage is, in practice, a pretty big deal. And the resolution advantage is notable too. These aren't minor things, and can outweigh the color advantages and effects of the SNES for some.

In fact, I was surprised to learn about the hardware-supported background layers of the two machines at some point in the last year or two, as all of my actual time with Genesis and SNES games left me with the impression that the Genesis was much better suited for dynamic backgrounds with a lot of parallax depth. I'm pretty sure the CPU is to thank for that.

 

[PumpkinSpice]

None of which the SNES itself did, it had expanded ROM chips in the cartridge to do that. It's like comparing Sonic 1 to Starfox.

F-Zero doesn't use any expansion chips.

 

[AgeEighty]

SNES games just looked a hell of a lot better than Genesis ones. The color palette had a lot to do with that, I suspect.

 

[Lettuce]

None of which the SNES itself did, it had expanded ROM chips in the cartridge to do that. It's like comparing Sonic 1 to Starfox.

Errr F-zero had no custom chips in the cart at all!

Mode-7, Transparency effects, the approx 32000 colour bank the snes could pull from was all in the architecture of the Super Nintendo hardware itself, just these 3 things are what help propel the snes beyond anything the MegaDrive could wish to do!. As said the only thing that let the snes down was the cpu clock speed, rather muddy looking rgb video output and the sample rate of the audio chips

 

[lazygecko]

Genesis can do scaling and rotation effects on the same scale as Mode7 games like F-Zero and Mario Kart. Just not as efficiently since the SNES had hardware functionality to do those specific features and do them really well. But nonetheless it is possible.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cDKQTkMEMc

Just goes to show the core differences of the systems in the way krejlooc described it. SNES is built to do very specific features very well, while Genesis is on the whole more flexible in what programmers could accomplish.

That kart racer demo was by sega68k who has done plenty of cool stuff, but his crowning achievement is making a fully-fledged port of Wolfenstein 3D with unbelievably good performance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sAZWWbY4n4

 

[Theonik]

This thread reminded me that my main Megadrive died a couple of weeks ago and I need to get me another one.

 

[Lettuce]

Genesis can do scaling and rotation effects on the same scale as Mode7 games like F-Zero and Mario Kart. Just not as efficiently since the SNES had hardware functionality to do those specific features and do them really well. But nonetheless it is possible.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cDKQTkMEMc

Just goes to show the core differences of the systems in the way krejlooc described it. SNES is built to do very specific features very well, while Genesis is on the whole more flexible in what programmers could accomplish.

That kart racer demo was by sega68k who has done plenty of cool stuff, but his crowning achievement is making a fully-fledged port of Wolfenstein 3D with unbelievably good performance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sAZWWbY4n4

Pfffff are you for real!?, im sorry but that is nowhere near on the 'same scale' as Mode 7 graphics mode! But is that even using the 'actual' hardware or is it all emulator based even so it still doesnt look no where near as good as mode-7 mode. I know Konami had some success with scaling and rotating but it was never as good as what the SNES could achieve and as you said use a lot of horsepower, where the snes could do it with ease as it was built into the hardware. There is actually a F-zero conversion project for the MD but its early days atm

Edit: here some footage.....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDZw6bHVAGw

 

[Cute Dragon Here]

After much consideration I think I'll have to give the win to the SNES graphically, resolution aside, due to the end results

Most of it had to do with an awful starting master palette and total colours, to be honest. The CRT blur helps, but you can't beat the real deal, in my opinion. I've personally found more SNES games to be much more palatable to look at even now, especially those that came later in the generation, and it's easier to hit the "good enough" part with worse... graphical skills on the part of the artists.

Some people might appreciate that the backgrounds might be better animated in action games on the other system, but I appreciate the overall graphics that can stand the test of time far better more.

The CPU can only do so much to help the graphics side to be competitive.

(By the way, I think there was an SNES game that managed to do most of the rendering of a pseudo-3D environment on the CPU, relying on Mode 7 only for... "screen buffer" scaling of all things, no extra chip involved, though it's running at halved resolution...)

 

[Malitik Sabu]

Errr F-zero had no custom chips in the cart at all!

Mode-7, Transparency effects, the approx 32000 colour bank the snes could pull from was all in the architecture of the Super Nintendo hardware itself, just these 3 things are what help propel the snes beyond anything the MegaDrive could wish to do!. As said the only thing that let the snes down was the cpu clock speed, rather muddy looking rgb video output and the sample rate of the audio chips

Ahh yes you are correct I got that mixed up with another game.

However, F-zero uses the background only mode 7 trick so not sure if one could really use that as an NES advantage or if it's simply a visual trick.

 

[Lettuce]

However, F-zero uses the background only mode 7 trick so not sure if one could really use that as an NES advantage or if it's simply a visual trick.

Errr thats all Mode 7 is, it allows a background layer to be scaled and rotated, it can only work on backgrounds, not sprites.

 

[Cute Dragon Here]

Ahh yes you are correct I got that mixed up with another game.

However, F-zero uses the background only mode 7 trick so not sure if one could really use that as an NES advantage or if it's simply a visual trick.

That's actually all Mode 7 can really do, but most Mode 7 games, I think, actually either change modes at a certain scan line or changes the matrix so that it appears to have a "proper" background above the horizon.

As limiting as Mode 7 was, it does bring out a completely different look, when combined with per-line matrix manipulation to bring out the perspective effect - trading height with depth as the resulting "visual" effect.

That kind of Mode 7 is the best use in my opinion.

(Also I think the horizon fog is done with per-scan line palette manipulation too)

 

[orioto]

Mah god that war will never end.

 

[Cute Dragon Here]

Mah god that war will never end.

Then again, a lot of things only become crystal clear in retrospect - and also when you've also got a comparable handheld to compare things with.

 

[lazygecko]

Pfffff are you for real!?, im sorry but that is nowhere near on the 'same scale' as Mode 7 graphics mode! But is that even using the 'actual' hardware or is it all emulator based even so it still doesnt look no where near as good as mode-7 mode. I know Konami had some success with scaling and rotating but it was never as good as what the SNES could achieve and as you said use a lot of horsepower, where the snes could do it with ease as it was built into the hardware. There is actually a F-zero conversion project for the MD but its early days atm

Edit: here some footage.....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDZw6bHVAGw

When I said scale I meant as in creating creating a practical gameplay scenario of the same type of technology. And that's precisely what it does at a very acceptable framerate, but at half the background resolution stretched out (the way I take it is that this is a compromise for cartridge space since it is being rendered from one single bitmap image as opposed to tiles).

If you want to see Wolfenstein running on the actual console hardware then there is footage here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JS5HJFmCIUE

 

[Celine]

(By the way, I think there was an SNES game that managed to do most of the rendering of a pseudo-3D environment on the CPU, relying on Mode 7 only for... "screen buffer" scaling of all things, no extra chip involved, though it's running at halved resolution...)

Wolfenstein 3D by id.
It was a nice trick to get decent performance without additional chips and big budgets.

If you want to see Wolfenstein running on the actual console hardware then there is footage here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JS5HJFmCIUE

Really a good effort on gasega68k part.

 

[Malitik Sabu]

Errr thats all Mode 7 is, it allows a background layer to be scaled and rotated, it can only work on backgrounds, not sprites.

The point im saying is that f-zero is not a good example of tech superiority over genesis since it's just a visual trick. Artstyle wise sure.

 

[Lettuce]

The point im saying is that f-zero is not a good example of tech superiority over genesis since it's just a visual trick. Artstyle wise sure.

Well its a graphical show piece for the SNES at the time and you bet your bottom dollar it was showing the SNES techincal superiority over the MD. You got to remember it was one of the first snes games to come out and nothing like it had been seen before on the likes of the MD, it still stands up as one of the great snes games to this very day!!

 

[Tain]

Some people might appreciate that the backgrounds might be better animated in action games on the other system, but I appreciate the overall graphics that can stand the test of time far better more.

The CPU can only do so much to help the graphics side to be competitive.

Foregrounds too, though. Segmented sprites and tiny effect sprites all over.

 

[lazygecko]

Foregrounds too, though. Segmented sprites and tiny effect sprites all over.

There are many more things you can do. The art compression alone is a huge deal and has a very direct impact on the visuals (not to mention content in general).

There are lots of good solid arguments for why you might prefer how SNES games looked. But the way so many people treat the small handful of hardware effects like the end-all-be-all of the debate, coupled with dismissive attitude towards the amount of features developers could accomplish on their own initiative on the Genesis, strikes me as a wee bit narrow minded and biased.

They're both interesting systems each with very distinguished features and advantages, which is something that should be celebrated compared to how homogenized everything is today. But in these general gaming communities like NeoGAF you've got such a huge group of people who will not even recognize the other side of things, and that bothers me.

 

[Malitik Sabu]

Well its a graphical show piece for the SNES at the time and you bet your bottom dollar it was showing the SNES techincal superiority over the MD. You got to remember it was one of the first snes games to come out and nothing like it had been seen before on the likes of the MD, it still stands up as one of the great snes games to this very day!!

Background tricks aren't really technical though.

 

[televator]

So if hypothetically...

I'm not debating multi plats. Multi platform games were almost always better on X360. It was easier to get good performance out of it.

I'm challenging that the 360 was just absolutely graphically superior all the time, because there was an exception with the few games built specifically to push SPUs rather than the more familiar and less burdensome 360 architecture. Also are you really saying that The Last of Us and Killzone 3 would look better and run smoother on 360 while keeping all the same effects?

Your current gen comparison falls flat on its face because the architecture between the 360 and PS3 was a world apart thanks to Cell and split exotic/common RAM on PS3. X1 and PS4 are literally using the same chips this gen and most of their RAM are large pools of familiar PC RAM. Not saying there aren't important differences, but that it makes comparisons far easier.

Asking what console had the better looking multi platform games, and what platform was definitely the most powerful were much different questions last gen.

 

[professor denim]

Man that was good year when they unveiled the ps3, I think half this board written off sony saying that they will never be able to achieve the bullshot footage of kz2.

They never did

 

[Chaplain]

SNES wins due to Rare's games.

 

[Cute Dragon Here]

There are many more things you can do. The art compression alone is a huge deal and has a very direct impact on the visuals (not to mention content in general).

There are lots of good solid arguments for why you might prefer how SNES games looked. But the way so many people treat the small handful of hardware effects like the end-all-be-all of the debate, coupled with dismissive attitude towards the amount of features developers could accomplish on their own initiative on the Genesis, strikes me as a wee bit narrow minded and biased.

They're both interesting systems each with very distinguished features and advantages, which is something that should be celebrated compared to how homogenized everything is today. But in these general gaming communities like NeoGAF you've got such a huge group of people who will not even recognize the other side of things, and that bothers me.

Bingo.

I guess some things never change, even after all these years. People tend to behave like they did a long time ago.

Has it ever been explained why the Genesis palette is 64-colours-large (not counting tricks) and the master palette RGB333? (Or is it a custom 512-colour set?) (I personally find a master palette of RGB555 or better means the beginning of diminishing returns for 8bpp-or-similar output.)