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[dogen]

I get a good laugh when I picture games like Mega Man X, Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy 6 on the Genesis.

Well, one of those is being done


I hope he takes out those voice samples though

A little on topic but what the technical reason the genesis sound comes through so clearly compared to the snes? Snes has always sounded muffled to me, like its coming through a cotton filter or something. Its way more details for sure, but it sounds so muffled whereas the genesis sound is twangy and not as detailed as snes but its crystal clear in comparison

The SNES had a pretty heavy handed gaussian filter that was applied to the sound. It made stuff sound a bit muffled, but it also helped smooth over the inevitably low quality samples devs had to squeeze into <64k of ram.

 

[onQ123]

I'm disappointed that no one said Blast Processing on the 1st page


Edit: never mind I found it

 

[dirthead]

Bottom line is that Nintendo made the smarter tradeoff. It was smarter to ship the machine with a better graphics chip that could handle more colors and a weaker CPU. You could always just throw on DSPs and so on for games that needed it. The results speak for themselves.

The color palette limitation on the Genesis just killed it. Made games look awful.

 

[dogen]

Oh right, I did not see the transparency. The Genesis cannot do true transparency, there isn't anything more to say about this.

Technically it can. Check out overdrive 2 again. I don't think many genesis developers back then, if any, knew about it though.

Bottom line is that Nintendo made the smarter tradeoff. It was smarter to ship the machine with a better graphics chip that could handle more colors and a weaker CPU. You could always just throw on DSPs and so on for games that needed it. The results speak for themselves.

The color palette limitation on the Genesis just killed it. Made games look awful.

You want to make a good looking genesis game? Hire good artists. Sonic, streets of rage 2 and 3, beyond oasis, etc all look great and colorful. More colors are better of course, but the games you're probably thinking of in your head were all drawn by badass artists who would make great looking genesis games too.

 

[DynamiteCop!]

I love this thread. Hearkens back to old-school system wars, though less hostile back then before the internet.

I had both, and enjoyed both, however, the Genesis did get more love I think from me, since it's software portfolio was far more diverse and "mature".

The system that had The Immortal (the Dark Souls of Isometric) with full 16-bit glory and not the NES busted port gets my slight edge of fondness.

LOL don't be so sure, back then people were using Usenet to argue and fight just as bad as they do now on the modern internet.

 

[cireza]

Technically it can. Check out overdrive 2 again.

Overdrive 2 simply shows that it is possible in very specific context, the Genesis still lacks the necessary color palettes to be able to do decent transparency.

 

[DeepEnigma]

LOL don't be so sure, back then people were using Usenet to argue and fight just as bad as they do now on the modern internet.

It was nowhere near like it is today, lol. Come on, you know this.

 

[kyubajin]

Being raised in South America which was Nintendoland (outside of Brazil), all I ever wanted was an SNES with SMW and A Link to the Past... until I went to a friend’s and played Streets of Rage 2, Sonic and Thunderforce IV (aka Lightening Force), the soundtracks alone were the best thing I had ever heard in my life.

 

[dogen]

Overdrive 2 simply shows that it is possible in very specific context, the Genesis still lacks the necessary color palettes to be able to do decent transparency.

I'm not sure why that matters. Transparency is just a math operation I thought. You take the color of the image below and add the one you're drawing to it at a certain opacity. Am I missing something?

 

[Redneckerz]

I am surprised nobody has brought the power of homebrew to the table and posted Wolfenstein 3D for the Megadrive:

 

[Viliger]

I'm not sure why that matters. Transparency is just a math operation I thought. You take the color of the image below and add the one you're drawing to it at a certain opacity. Am I missing something?

Because it was expensive back in the day. Hell, it is still expensive today, that's why we see a lot of dithering on non-important objects as opposed to actual transparency. SNES had hardware support for that, so it wasn't that expensive, had dedicated chip for that or whatever else, I honestly have no idea what they actually did to achieve hardware transparency. Genesis didn't have that, so you had to do all of the calculations manually. It is possible, just extremely ineffective in real life scenarios.

 

[DunDunDunpachi]

I am surprised nobody has brought the power of homebrew to the table and posted Wolfenstein 3D for the Megadrive:

Forgot about this one. Definitely shows off the processor power (all that smoothly-rendering 3D).

 

[DeepEnigma]

I am surprised nobody has brought the power of homebrew to the table and posted Wolfenstein 3D for the Megadrive:

Is it me, or does this look and run way better than the SNES one?

 

[dogen]

Because it was expensive back in the day. Hell, it is still expensive today, that's why we see a lot of dithering on non-important objects as opposed to actual transparency. SNES had hardware support for that, so it wasn't that expensive, had dedicated chip for that or whatever else, I honestly have no idea what they actually did to achieve hardware transparency. Genesis didn't have that, so you had to do all of the calculations manually. It is possible, just extremely ineffective in real life scenarios.

You missed the part where I said watch overdrive 2 I guess.



The clouds in the background (maybe the rain too) are transparent, at 2:20 the overdrive logo goes transparent, at 2:45 they do a bunch of transparent overlays, and then the nebula at 3:45 is also transparent. Also at 5:30.

 

[Redneckerz]

Is it me, or does this look and run way better than the SNES one?

It does. Only the Shareware Episode is complete, however. Its done by Gasega68K, and quite an impressive port if you ask me.

You missed the part where I said watch overdrive 2 I guess.



The clouds in the background (maybe the rain too) are transparent, at 2:20 the overdrive logo goes transparent, at 2:45 they do a bunch of transparent overlays, and then the nebula at 3:45 is also transparent. Also at 5:30.

Useless Trivia: Based on Titan's Megadrive work i held a interview with one of its graphic artists, Alien PDX. You can find a rough translated part of this, here.

EDIT:

Forgot about this one. Definitely shows off the processor power (all that smoothly-rendering 3D).

From what i know this homebrew has had some serious optimization into it, there is definitely a lot more effort involved than you usually see in homebrew ports.

 

[Viliger]

You missed the part where I said watch overdrive 2 I guess.

And you missed the part where I said real life scenarios. Tech demos are not real life scenarios. The entirety of Genesis' processing power is focused on image quality in this case, no pesky game logic and collision checks to waste power on. People made actual 3D on NES, even if that was just a cube on the black background, that doesn't mean NES can do 3D in games.

 

[dogen]

And you missed the part where I said real life scenarios. Tech demos are not real life scenarios. The entirety of Genesis' processing power is focused on image quality in this case, no pesky game logic and collision checks to waste power on. People made actual 3D on NES, even if that was just a cube on the black background, that doesn't mean NES can do 3D in games.

Yeah I did miss that part lol.

But how much extra processing power does the transparency use? I'll ask the guy who found it.

I know it was related to a hardware debug register they found, so I don't think it actually involves any extra math by the CPU.

Yeah, no extra CPU used. You just gotta write to a register once. Doesn't work on all VDPs though, so you couldn't use it in games anyway I guess. But performance wise there's no roadblock.

 

[dirthead]

Technically it can. Check out overdrive 2 again. I don't think many genesis developers back then, if any, knew about it though.



You want to make a good looking genesis game? Hire good artists. Sonic, streets of rage 2 and 3, beyond oasis, etc all look great and colorful. More colors are better of course, but the games you're probably thinking of in your head were all drawn by badass artists who would make great looking genesis games too.

Odd, I've always thought SOR games looked hideous compared to say, Final Fight. Sonic looked good because the backgrounds basically had no shading and were largely composed of simple geometric shapes and so the color palette didn't hurt it as much.

Beat 'em ups, especially gritty looking ones, are color hungry because they're all shading detail.

Final Fight got absolutely destroyed on the Sega CD because of this. Horrible dithering for all!

The SNES version's resolution was like 100x2, but at least it was colorful.

 

[dogen]

Odd, I've always thought SOR games looked hideous compared to say, Final Fight.
Beat 'em ups, especially gritty looking ones, are color hungry because they're all shading detail.

Final Fight got absolutely destroyed on the Sega CD because of this. Horrible dithering for all!



The SNES version's resolution was like 100x2, but at least it was colorful.

Idk it looks good to me

Sonic looked good because the backgrounds basically had no shading and were largely composed of simple geometric shapes and so the color palette didn't hurt it as much.

I'm not completely sure what you mean, but there were stages with a good amount of shading in the background.

 

[dirthead]

Idk it looks good to me

Yeah see that doesn't look good to me (especially the second shot). The background looks so flat. It looks like a world made of plastic. SOR also has a real problem with different enemies basically looking like they belong to different species. Final Fight's art is so wonderfully detailed.

 

[dogen]

Looks kinda drab. I like the punchy contrast in streets of rage more.

 

[dirthead]

Looks kinda drab. I like the punchy contrast in streets of rage more.

To be fair to Final Fight, that was probably the least flattering screenshot of it ever posted on the internet, and of course it doesn't look as colorful when it's empty.

 

[tkscz]

Yeah see that doesn't look good to me (especially the second shot). The background looks so flat. It looks like a world made of plastic. SOR also has a real problem with different enemies basically looking like they belong to different species. Final Fight's art is so wonderfully detailed.

While I agree with you on the Genesis version of SOR1 as that was a port from the arcade version. SOR 2 looks better than SOR1 and FF1 as it has a lot more detailed than the previous screens show.

SOR 2 used (and very wisely used) night time as a way of making up for the Genesis' lack of colors. It looks dimmer but it perfectly fits the motif, which is why it works well for me.

 

[dogen]

To be fair to Final Fight, that was probably the least flattering screenshot of it ever posted on the internet, and of course it doesn't look as colorful when it's empty.

Idk, still don't really like that look. Kinda ugly.

 

[cireza]

I'm not sure why that matters. Transparency is just a math operation I thought. You take the color of the image below and add the one you're drawing to it at a certain opacity. Am I missing something?

So let's say you have a background that has 16 colors. And you use a fog effect above it. Your fog uses 4 colors.

So actually, every color of your background might be aligned with one of the four colors of your fog, resulting in a different color each time. So you are already using 16 x 4 colors = 64 colors. That's the entire Genesis simultaneous color palette you are using.

And let me add that a single 8x8 sprite cannot use colors from different palettes at once. Which means that whenever you are drawing an 8x8 element (which is the base of everything, every sprite is composed of smaller sprite), you can only pick its colors among the 16 colors of the palette the sprite element is configured to use.

And finally, the first color of each palette is reserved for the transparent color (no color). So you really have only 15 colors at your disposal.

So achieving transparency in these conditions is extremely tricky. You can of course do things, but you will be limited. For example, you could decide to draw everything with only 5 colors (background, sprites), and add a fog effect fog that would be a gradient of 3 grays. Admitting that the fog covers the entire screen, then each color will actually be decided among the 3 possible colors, which will all be in your palette because you are based on 5 colors (5x3 = 15). But you are still working on 8x8 elements, and your fog should actually be a "per pixel" effect, which brings another problem to the table.

I am not a Genesis developer by the way, this is simply my understanding of the problems you would encounter trying to apply transparency on this system in a real game setting (background + sprites, not tech demo of logos and stuff).

The Genesis had a special mode that allowed some color effects to make things darker or brighter, allowing to go over the limit of 64 colors. With this effect (used in Vectorman), you could probably do a few things too, but my understanding is that it is also very limited. But theorically, this allows more colors available. You don't have to reserve all your 64 colors for your effect, as the other colors (darker and brighter) are somehow deduced at runtime or something like that. Again, not an expert on the topic.

 

[Iced Arcade]

Genesis is easily my favorite of the two, but shitting on SNES's hardware as a Genesis fan is laughable...

Agreed

 

[dogen]

Agreed

SNES can do lusher audio, and has more graphical features built in (transparency, mode 7, higher color depth), but otherwise the genesis is mostly more capable. The CPU isn't all that much faster, but it's easier to program, and there's more bandwidth throughout the system. So the hardware you think is better will depend on if you prefer faster games (or at least less slowdown) with more sprites all over the screen, or better graphics and sampled music.

I am not a Genesis developer by the way, this is simply my understanding of the problems you would encounter trying to apply transparency on this system in a real game setting (background + sprites, not tech demo of logos and stuff).

The rain part in overdrive 2 has sprites, the rain, multiple background layers, and the transparent clouds. The nebula section has sprites as well.

 

[cireza]

The rain part in overdrive 2 has sprites, the rain, multiple background layers, and the transparent clouds. The nebula section has sprites as well.

Ok. What I said still applies. You need all colors loaded on your palettes (including the ones resulting from the transparency effect), and you have only 64 colors available on Genesis, plus the constraint that a sprite is locked to a 16 colors palette. This console is not suited for transparency.

Nor is it suited for 3D. Because the layer you draw in 3D can be composed of unpredictable elements (color wise), you are constrained to have all your 3D elements rendered using a single 16 colors palette. This is what happens with Virtua Racing. Still a very impressive feat to have this game working on Genesis.

 

[dogen]

Ok. What I said still applies. You need all colors loaded on your palettes (including the ones resulting from the transparency effect)

I could be wrong, but I don't think that's true. The transparency is done by the VDP internally when it's drawing stuff. You just have to manipulate a VDP debug register. You're not calculating the intermediate colors on the CPU. It doesn't work the same way on each revision though, so it's not actually usable in a game, but if all revisions had the same VDP it could be.

 

[Stevey]

Megadrive is one of the GOATs

 

[lock2k]

I agree.

The Genesis is an impressive piece of hardware and some of those later titles are really good looking.

I miss the time when consoles were unique in regards to soundchips, the way they operated, those crazy different ports of the same games, or even different games altogether (like Jurassic Park Genesis version and SNES version, or Alladin, which was also wildly different).

I also loved to compare the music whenever they had a multiplatform game in both consoles. I still listen to a lot of these game OSTs on YouTube.

 

[DunDunDunpachi]

* Puyo Puyo 2 is one of the best puzzle games of all time, but Tetris Attack on the SNES is also one of the best puzzle games of all time. This is almost a tie, but when you factor in that the SNES got a port of Puzzle Bobble and the Genesis didn't, this is probably yet another SNES win.

Actually dirthead I concede this one (earlier I disagreed). I was looking back over my SNES collection and realized there was stuff like Tetris Butou Gaiden, Super Bombliss, Panic Bomber, Kirby's Avalanche (Puyo), and Mario & Wario on the SNES. You could also say SNES had better bomberman games compared to Genesis, but I don't think I own a Bomberman on either.

Anyway, SNES does have more puzzle games than Genesis. I have a soft spot for Columns III but overall SNES could be crowned the winner. Saturn vs N64, though...

 

[Wolfgang Jr]

can i show off this again?

Looks and sounds exactly the like an old school cracked warez game installer.

 

[Insane Metal]

Well, those look worse than the best SNES games and they also sound like crap.

 

[dogen]

Well, those look worse than the best SNES games.

The snes has a bigger palette so it's natural that the best of the best took advantage. In terms of technical trickery games like sonic 3/k, contra hard corps, batman, panorama cotton and especially red zone really take the cake though. And I think that was the main point of the thread. What games did anything especially interesting on snes? I can't really think of any, but I'm not the expert there.

and they also sound like crap.

well, that depends on the game doesn't it?

 

[cireza]

I could be wrong, but I don't think that's true. The transparency is done by the VDP internally when it's drawing stuff. You just have to manipulate a VDP debug register. You're not calculating the intermediate colors on the CPU. It doesn't work the same way on each revision though, so it's not actually usable in a game, but if all revisions had the same VDP it could be.

I don't think that you can magically display more colors than authorized by the palettes available. If you could, there would be games that do it.

The few tricks that allow it use palettes changes while drawing the screen (like the water effects, or Toy Story cut-scenes), or use the Shadow & Highlight mode (Vectorman), but thinking you can do this at each pixel in a normal game situation (with sprites, layers and a game engine running) looks unreasonable to me.

 

[Alpolio]

I don't think that you can magically display more colors than authorized by the palettes available. If you could, there would be games that do it.

I remember all of the talk about dithering in Eternal Champions and how it would trick our old NSTC & Pal TV's into displaying more colors than what the system could normally provide. I think it was Gamepro who had a big writeup on it. I had the game and the trick did work on it. I couldn't see the individual pixels, so they all blend together to make a different color.

It doesn't work on modern HDTV's or monitors, but it does make it easier to see what Sega did.

 

[cireza]

I remember all of the talk about dithering in Eternal Champions and how it would trick our old NSTC & Pal TV's into displaying more colors than what the system could normally provide. I think it was Gamepro who had a big writeup on it. I had the game and the trick did work on it. I couldn't see the individual pixels, so they all blend together to make a different color.

Eternal Champions does not display more than 64 colors to my knowledge, my guess is that they are simply talking about dithering through a composite cable. Eternal Champions is still a very interesting game in terms of art direction and dealing with the 64 colors limitation. Eternal Champions on Sega-CD does not display more than 64 colors either.

I explained how to achieve more colors in the second part of my previous post. I don't know of any others ways to do it on Genesis (on actually released games).

 

[Deleted member 738976]

What happens when you don't have Blast Processing?

 

[phil_t98]

What happens when you don't have Blast Processing?

Am sorry but what are those?

 

[dogen]

I don't think that you can magically display more colors than authorized by the palettes available. If you could, there would be games that do it.

The few tricks that allow it use palettes changes while drawing the screen (like the water effects, or Toy Story cut-scenes), or use the Shadow & Highlight mode (Vectorman), but thinking you can do this at each pixel in a normal game situation (with sprites, layers and a game engine running) looks unreasonable to me.

It's not a documented feature though. It's a side effect of messing with an undocumented register intended for debugging during manufacturing. No games touched it.

Am sorry but what are those?

homebrew demos. first one is pc engine.
the best one is by markey jester actually, outperforming the sega cd version

 

[lock2k]

Y'know, this is something that has always bugged me about the Genesis sound vs SNES sound debate: I concede that the SNES is superior at melody. It had a broader range of instruments and more sound channels.

But the percussion on Genesis was leagues better. Drum Beats on SNES felt weak. Genesis had that punchy Yamaha synth going for it.

It makes for unique music on both systems. That's why I own lots of games on both!

As a musician myself (even though I don't work with it professionaly, I've been playing guitar since 1991) I agree wholeheartedly. Both platforms have a wide array of sounds and cool soundtracks and they have influenced me a lot. I really love how the sounds on the Genesis sound punchier and the bass is more visceral, I also think that MK games sound a tad darker than their SNES counterparts. While the tropical sounding stuff on Donkey Kong can only be found on SNES and there's no equivalent on Genesis. That generation was really something special when it comes to music.

 

[00ich]

Overdrive 2 simply shows that it is possible in very specific context, the Genesis still lacks the necessary color palettes to be able to do decent transparency.

The Genesis had apparently a highlight and shadow mode per pixel where it could double or half the brightness of a color.
A ex-genesis developer has a great video series on youTube.
Here is how they used that to display more than 64 colors during the cut-scenes of toy story.


In Ranger-X it is used as actual transparency-effect:

 

[dogen]

The Genesis had apparently a highlight and shadow mode per pixel where it could double or half the brightness of a color.
A ex-genesis developer has a great video series on youTube.
Here is how they used that to display more than 64 colors during the cut-scenes of toy story.

In Ranger-X it is used as actual transparency-effect:

That's a clever use of it in ranger-x, though that's pretty fake as a transparency effect lol. But yeah lots of games used S/H to darken colors under water and stuff.

 

[cireza]

The Genesis had apparently a highlight and shadow mode per pixel where it could double or half the brightness of a color.
A ex-genesis developer has a great video series on youTube.

Yes, I watched many of his videos, they are great quality.

Many games use Shadow mode simply to put a shadow on the ground where the character is standing. This is actually a simple but great use of it, because other consoles that don't have the feature are forced to make blinking shadows (displaying a black shadow one frame out of two). For example, Neo Geo does this a lot.

 

[Deleted member 738976]

How to make good Genesis music. Don't pick bad sounding instruments.

 

[dogen]

How to make good Genesis music. Don't pick bad sounding instruments.

lol well.. I know you're joking but time trax has some pretty intricate sound design. There's a reason almost no other games sound quite like it on the system.

 

[IzzyThePush]

NO! NO! NO!

You think Mode 7 is cheating, but the FM Tuner is not cheating? Go away.

 

[Trogdor1123]

Did the Sega CD add any actual processing power or just storage. It had some amazing games.

 

[dogen]

Did the Sega CD add any actual processing power or just storage. It had some amazing games.

Yeah, it added a 12.5MHz 68000 (almost 2x the speed of the one in the genesis), another 768 + 64KB of ram, an 8 channel PCM chip (similar to the snes) and a scaling and rotation chip. Check out soulstar and batman and robin for the best uses of the scaler.