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Were 8 and 16-bit games 60fps?

M

MercuryLS

Banned
I'm curious, was 60fps standard during these gens? Was there ever any games that pushed visuals and dropped down to 30fps? Did any games compromise on framerate to push graphics? It seems to me that once 3D graphics became prevalent that the focus shifted to visuals over consistently high framerates, Is this accurate?
 
I'm pretty sure it was, because 60hz was the standard refresh rate for NTSC TVs. Unless you saw slowdown in the game, your game was running at 60fps.

PAL gamers had to settle for 50fps, because PAL refreshes at 50hz. This was why importing was so desirable, because you actually got a game that was running at its intended speed.

I'm certainly no authority on the subject, this is all from vague memory, so I'm hoping someone else will chime in.
 
I remember quite a few megadrive games being 30/24 fps when I used to rent stuff often but at a young age I never really cared for the frame rates as much as I would now with a 3D game.

Titles like toejam and earl 1 were even lower then that.
 
StaticJam said:
Why are people so obsessed with 60FPS as of lately?
Click to expand...

I think people got tired of the PS360 gen, where the consoles struggled to hit 720p60 in most games (hell, even 720p30 was too high for some games). Now with the PS4/XB1 gen people want (and were expecting, I would imagine) 1080p60 but still aren't getting it (for the most part).
 
Almost all games were locked to 60hz/fps... The way these 2D games pushed the system was they caused games to drop to a crawl if they couldn't keep up (SNES) or sprites would be removed/flicker (NES) as they tried to display too much for the hardware to handle at once.
 
thelatestmodel said:
I'm pretty sure it was, because 60hz was the standard refresh rate for NTSC TVs. Unless you saw slowdown in the game, your game was running at 60fps.
Click to expand...
That's not a given.

In old consoles, you hadn't to *draw* the scene. The console was outputting the image using the sprites data: both graphical data and position/rotation/scaling registers.

You could still only update the position registers at 30fps, and thus get a 30fps game.


But the fact is that having twice the time didn't allow you to draw more things on screen, in most case. The sprite budget is fixed. So there is very little advantage to NOT supporting 60fps. As long as you can update the positions in time, you're good.

The only slowdowns were because the processor couldn't update the positions of the sprites in time, but for most games, it's because you have too many items moving on screen (shmups, in particular, when there's too many bullets/items). That's not a drawing issue, that a computation issue.
 
Astro Monster said:
No, i'm right. PAL CRT TVs could only display a 25i (Interlaced) signal (Later on, a lot could also show 30i)
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Consoles used a trick:

You can only display on TV an interlaced image at 50Hz/60Hz, so a complete image each 1/25th / 1/30th second.

But that's for a ~448 line image.

Consoles were outputting a PROGRESSIVE 224 lines* image. At 50Hz / 60Hz.

* and a bit more than that in PAL, something close to 576/2, but not exactly this. Actually, because of performance issue, the number of lines in PAL games can vary (black bars)


Edit : to be more precise, interlaced images on TV display odd lines for odd frames, and even lines for even frames. You needed two frames to get the whole image. A console only display odd lines for ALL frames, even lines are kept black. Hence the "scanlines" some love when upscaling old games. Thus, progressive image at 50/60Hz, but at half the vertical resolution.
 
Astro Monster said:
No, i'm right. PAL CRT TVs could only display a 25i (Interlaced) signal (Later on, a lot could also show 30i)
Click to expand...

PAL standard scans 50 fields per second, as in 25 odd and 25 even fields. the two sets of odd and even fields combined display 25 full frames per second.
NTSC does exactly the same but at 60 Hz or 60 fields per second, 30 odd and 30 even. this means 30 full frames per second.

however the PAL standard has a better color accuracy and higher resolution.
 
Manp said:
PAL standard scans 50 fields per second, as in 25 odd and 25 even fields. the two sets of odd and even fields combined display 25 full frames per second.
NTSC does exactly the same but at 60 Hz or 60 fields per second, 30 odd and 30 even. this means 30 full frames per second.

however the PAL standard has a better color accuracy and higher resolution.
Click to expand...
Actually, PAL is only the color encoding.

NOT the frequency.


PAL can be 30/60Hz at the "NTSC" resolution. PAL-M, for example, is interlaced, 480 lines at 60Hz.

Granted, it's RARE, but it was actually used. In Brazil, for example.
 
StaticJam said:
Why are people so obsessed with 60FPS as of lately?
Click to expand...

People have been interested in framerates ever since, well, ever. People complained of 'slowdown' back in the arcade/snes era, and that was just framerate drops. PC gamers have used it as a benchmark for 20+ years.

60 is seen as the idea framerate for many games, as it gives slick controls and responsiveness.
 
CRT displays were 50/60 fps, but they showed half a frame each time (odd/even lines) - that's called interlaced. So you basically got 60/50 half frames per second.
Modern digital displays are using "progressive" mode, meaning each frame is a full frame.
But 60 half frames (interlaced) per second aren't comparable to 30 full frames today (progressive) since the half frames can still be updated 60 times a second, while the full frames at 30fps - only 30 times/second. Meaning that a 60fps interlaced will have better time-resolution and 30fps progressive will have better spatial/space resolution. Those differences are also the cause of de-interlacing artifacts/jaggies. (for example when you display something meant for a CRT on a modern display)
When people talk about 60fps today they usually mean 60fps in progressive mode - 60 full frames per second in contrast to the odd/even line interlacing that was used in the past. And off-course the resolutions are higher today as well. A PAL TV was 768X576 - about 0.5megapixels, while 720P is ~1MP and 1080P is around 2MP.
 
I'm not sure what framerate it ran at, but something like Goemon 2 was stuttering like crazy in some levels. Badly optimized games are definitely not a recent invention.
 
If you have a fast moving side scroller the difference between 30 and 60 is more obvious than with a 3d game.

But 60fps was more of a gold standard in arcade machines than 8bit home systems.
 
It's kinda ironic how people are willing to trade resolution and colour accuracy for framerate when it comes to retro gaming, but today, it's always the opposite.
 
Costia said:
CRT displays were 50/60 fps, but they showed half a frame each time (odd/even lines) - that's called interlaced. So you basically got 60/50 half frames per second.
Click to expand...

Really that is more true for broadcast video content. Games would have access to the full 50/60 fps but at lower pixel resolution.
 
Andrew. said:
The Last of Us Remastered, unfortunately.

I dont get it either man.
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I can assure you this did not spring up within the last week.

It's smoother, works better for some games, and there's quite a few games that satisfy themselves hitting 30 most of the time rather than being a good solid, stable 30. Anyways yes, 2D games of those generations were frequently 60 FPS, and if they weren't it was usually because the action was that hectic at times causing framerate drops. But as noted there are exceptions, and it doesn't feel like 3D 60 FPS because while scrolling around and movement was done at 60 FPS the actual frames of animation per sprite were more like 5 or 10 per second at best. Just contrast A Link to the Past and A Link Between Worlds, the latter will undoubtedly feel way smoother because of that, nevermind 3D perspective of the world rather than tiles and sprites.

Winterfang said:
I don't think I remember any 60fps game, besides Sonic 1.
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Probably because you - and most of us - took it for granted, nevermind my prior point (and I think I'd remember Sonic 1 having animation THAT smooth.) You play a game like Ghosts & Goblins on NES and you quite readily realize just how much smoother nearly every other game on that and the SNES/Genesis are, or if you played some of the old PC games out there. They had their own advantages, but smooth scrolling was not one of them.
 
yeah, most 2d games were with few exceptions;

Outrun arcade was 30fps.
Metal Slug games were 30fps

3d games were all over the place.
On C64 you had stuff like Driller and Total Eclipse that were something like 1fps or even 0.2 fps (sometimes a frame took 5 seconds to draw, true story).
On Amiga you had games like Power Drift conversion that was probably 10fps and absolutely unplayable etc.

I don't think I remember any 60fps game, besides Sonic 1.
Click to expand...

nah, that was just more obvious because of how fast it moved, but most 2D games you can mention on NES, SNES, Master System, Genesis...they were all 60fps.
 
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