So, what you playing at the mo? Retro Edition

o1s1n

It was amazing to see back in the nineties, but I think it is one aspect of the Snes that hasn't aged particularly well. Mario Kart makes my eyes bleed.

Playing Micro machines on multiplayer with a gang of people is some of the best multiplayer fun in existence. It's up there with Bomberman for sheer laugh your arse off/scream in frustration moments. Far far superior to Mario Kart alright.

Retr0gamer

I still love seeing mode 7 effects in games especially when they are handled properly and cleverly. Racing games and 3D effects are only half of it. I still think area 2 of super aleste is amazing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPuCvl8yXVA

And without it we wouldn't have the gorgeous Axelay. Majyuouu also did some very clever stuff with Mode 7 to make some really repulsive pulsating bosses.

Of course when Red Zone did it on the megadrive it was the most awesome thing ever as well as the scaling and 360 rotating sprites in Mega Turrican. Still don't know how they managed that since even treasure could only get a background tile to rotate a few degrees using the background offset mode. Only other game I saw scaling in was the ending of thunderforce 3 and it was a single background tile on a black background that slowed the megadrive to a crawl.

However when it comes to mode 7 and scaling effects the saturn was the daddy. Grandia looks amazing and way better than the PS1 port but my favourite use of it is stage 3 in Soukyugurentai.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnpKK22698s

Flying through the different layers of clouds while ships scalein from above and below you and cast shadows on the clouds while catching a glimpse of the boss and it's escort before breaking through the clouds and racing full pelt after the boss. Pure adrenaline pumping gaming.

Augmerson

That 2nd lvl of Super Aleste really is something else.

o1s1n

It's the 'lets make a game out of driving around on a flat plane with things drawn on its surface' aspect of mode 7 I dislike.

Even things like flying the airship in FF VI around a flat plane surface annoy me.

Like you mentioned though, using it as an effect in 2d situations is a completely different thing.

And don't get me started on the scaling and rotation in Red Zone. I always think my Megadrive is going to explode from pure awesomeness when I play that.

Have you played The Adventures of Batman and Robin for the MD? Gameplay isn't great...but the visual effects will blow your mind.

Augmerson

o1s1n wrote: »

It's the 'lets make a game out of driving around on a flat plane with things drawn on its surface' aspect of mode 7 I dislike.

Even things like flying the airship in FF VI around a flat plane surface annoy me.

Like you mentioned though, using it as an effect in 2d situations is a completely different thing.

And don't get me started on the scaling and rotation in Red Zone. I always think my Megadrive is going to explode from pure awesomeness when I play that.

Have you played The Adventures of Batman and Robin for the MD? Gameplay isn't great...but the visual effects will blow your mind.

I think I played Batman and Robin in a friend's house or borrowed it from them. I remember the graphics being very good, digitised right? Kind of like in Mortal Kombat I think. The gameplay was pretty dire though

CiDeRmAn

I agree that Mode 7 was put to good use in other genres of games, the ones mentioned above but even in MarioWolrld and Yoshi's Island, with the scaling of bosses and the like.
The scaling in Contra was also cool.
I agree that whe it came to RedZone it was hailed as the best thing ever, but when it was seen on the MegaCD it was dismissed as too little for too much money, and they were dead right.
But my specific complaint was the lazy use of it in Snes racing games, I was in a friends house with my Megadrive and another friend of his brought his Snes and Road Rash II looked so much better than Super Mario Kart, ok, the multiplayer of SMK made it one to own but the biking across a snaking, undulating road was amazing in RoadRash II.

Certainly some Snes developers got the message by the time they made TopGear2000, the successor to the Lotus games on the Megadrive, Amga and PC.
They abandoned the whole Mode7 bull and simply coded a more Megadrive way of handling the road, to great effect.

And as for Retro's critique of the Megadrive roads, sure I believe Outrun in the arcades did rather well with the same system!
And I don't remember the Mode7 method of racing game enviroments being perpetuated on any other consoles, aside from the aforementioned MegaCD.

Augmerson

The Mega CD handled it really well, I have one game, SoulStar, that looked amazing. It's in this video -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k80dODWdj9I

Retr0gamer

Augmerson wrote: »

I think I played Batman and Robin in a friend's house or borrowed it from them. I remember the graphics being very good, digitised right? Kind of like in Mortal Kombat I think. The gameplay was pretty dire though

That's batman forever which looked and played ****.

I have played batman and robin. There's something not right about it. It looks great in places but it's just too hard and not much fun. Also the sound effects are weedy and are drowned out by a totally out of place techno sountrack. It does some clever things with the hardware but everything it does was done before and better in the treasure games. It's still not up there with Red Zone, Mega Turrican and Ranger X for technical wizardry.

On an unrelated note a lot of people think Chuck Rock 2 was the first megadrive game to do rotation but Streets of Rage does it in the pirate ship level and one of the first games on the megadrive Gynoug does it in the very first level. It's still not the 360 rotation seen in Mega Turrican and Red Zone. I think Chuck Rock 2 was the first example of 'playfield rotation' on the megadrive where you can walk on the rotating object.

Another technical marvel on the megadrive is Probotector/Contra Hard Corp. It looks a bit crap but the amount of sprites some of the bosses have is amazing and it pulls of some crazy graphical effects like the second level boss on the highway running down the road after you. Street Racer on the Megadrive also fakes Mode 7 well. It's still not true mode 7, more like the effect seen in Contra Hard Corp but it's very smooth and effective.

I didn't really mind the Mode 7 airship bits in FF6. I love the bit of haze at the top of the screen, really adds atmosphere. It was pulled off even better in Axelay on the 3rd stage boss where when you kill him the haze gets lighter and changes the scene from night to dusk. Very effective.

Sorry if it's getting a bit too technical but I used to read magazines that Richard Leadbetter used to work on so I learnt loads about how the 16-bit systems worked and I'm fascinated with the tricks programmers pulled to get the most out of them.

Retr0gamer

I still think that the megadrive way of handling the roads was very low tech compared to Mode 7. Sure you could put fake hills in but you couldn't drive backwards and even circuits felt unnatural, it wasn't a circuit but just a straigth bit of road. Mode 7 was a good stop gap until true 3D came along. Courses were actually circuits, you could go wherever you wanted including backwards and despite the lack of hills it didn't stop Mario Kart using jump really well or F-zero having excellent use of jumps. This opened up shortcuts and exploits that were totally impossible to do on anything but Mode 7 racers. There's was so much more you could do in the mode 7 racers that something like outrun and road rash couldn't. I'd gladly sacrifice the jumps that were only really visual in road rash for the amount of freedom, gameplay elements and conhesive feel of a mode 7 racer.I think Mario Kart gets a lot of flak because it only takes up a half of the screen so looks crap but that was the only way 2 player would work and it needed an extra chip. F-zero I think still looks great and faster than anything the megadrive could do with the exception of Domarks F1 game which looked very minimalist just to keep up the speed.

AndyKiely

Every couple of Weeks I flick onto Sonic 3 & Knuckles or Sonic CD, Love them games

Retr0gamer

Core Design made some really good Mega CD games and were the only ones really to take advantage of the scaling.

As for Sonic CD I always found it the worst and most boring of the 16-bt Sonics. The levels are too long, badly designed and samey to the point of being boring. I could never finish it. I'd get 75% through and turn it off because I just was so bored with it.

CiDeRmAn

Ah, I forgot F-Zero, now I have it for the Snes, GBA, N64 and GC and I must say, the love people have for the Snes and GBA editions is lost on me, I just don't get it at all, again, the sensation of racing around and multicolored square of carpet is all I get.
I reckon once the world had been treated to the likes of Virtua Racing the gig was up for sprite based tracks, Mode7 or not,and polygons were the only way forward.
And there the Megadrive excelled as well, I much prefer the speedy rendering of Virtua Racing on the Sega console to the rather low framerate but very colourful effort in Stunt Race FX on the Snes, both games I own by the way.

Not too many games either were terribly interested in you being able to turn around during a race, or drive in reverse for that matter. Typically racers went kinda forward!

Retr0gamer

CiDeRmAn wrote: »

Not too many games either were terribly interested in you being able to turn around during a race, or drive in reverse for that matter. Typically racers went kinda forward!

Maybe so but it enabled the best part of mario kart. Battle mode!

batari

I think a lot of you guys have to get over your graphics fixation and start looking at playability.
Just cos' it looks crap (to you), don't mean s**t. It could still be the greatest game in the world if the playability is there.
So much bad karma for Mariokart doesn't make baby jesus cry, it makes atariman cry:(
If I relied on graphics my name here would be xBox360man, or some other such s**t.

o1s1n

Well they are called videogames. :P As important as playability is, pretty looking things are always welcome too.

My own dislike of Mario Kart goes way beyond it's visuals. I find it a very slow, dull boring over rated game. Always have. Even when it was new.

As for the thread topic, spent a while Playing Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain this evening. Really enjoying it. Although I'm remembering way too much from my last play through about ten years ago.

batari

o1s1n wrote: »

My own dislike of Mario Kart goes way beyond it's visuals. I find it a very slow, dull boring over rated game.

Wow. That is seriously the first time i've EVER heard an old school gamer say something like that about Mario Kart.



Just. Wow.

I'mma gonna go lie down now...

o1s1n

When it comes to multiplayer games..actually any racing game, I like things that are fast paced.

Mario Kart is like driving around Dublin city centre with the new 30kph speed limit.

batari

:DNow I know you're just taking the p*ss.

Or you're never played it enough to see it's full potential?

Talk to me O1s1n, you can tell me..

o1s1n

Maybe it just lost more than 17% of it's speed when converted to PAL...

Okay I'm being a tad dramatic..:D It's not god awful, but it really really doesn't hold my attention for more than a few minutes. I have tried and tried. Played most versions. Got a little bit of fun out of multiplayer on the DS...but would rather be playing something else.

Retr0gamer

He was obviously too crap to get past 50cc and take the training wheels off for the much faster 150cc :P

o1s1n

Retr0gamer wrote: »

He was obviously too crap to get past 50cc and take the training wheels off for the much faster 150cc :P

Quiet you! Get back to fapping over mode 7 :pac:

Retr0gamer

Oh yeah, spread 'em for retr0 baby.

Augmerson

o1s1n wrote: »

Maybe it just lost more than 17% of it's speed when converted to PAL...

You should get yourself an NTSC Snes or FC Twin, they're fairly cheap on eBay. The games too are cheap coming from Canada or the States given the Euro is stronger right now, and you don't have that PAL slowdown or black bar on the screen. But of course you already know this. But I just really want to impress upon you the joy of playing a 17% faster version of that game of games - Donkey Kong Country...

o1s1n

Augmerson wrote: »

You should get yourself an NTSC Snes or FC Twin, they're fairly cheap on eBay. The games too are cheap coming from Canada or the States given the Euro is stronger right now, and you don't have that PAL slowdown or black bar on the screen. But of course you already know this. But I just really want to impress upon you the joy of playing a 17% faster version of that game of games - Donkey Kong Country...

I already has a Super Famicom. So no black boarders/lots of 60hz love for me

And as for games...well...my snes cart buying has come to a complete halt after getting the Wild Card. Which is sad in a way..but doesn't bother me too much. I was never really that into collecting Snes stuff for collecting sake like with other consoles (I think it was due to the lack of clamshells). It was purely to just play the games.

One of the handfull of games I can't play because of the ROM size being too big is Donkey Kong Country. The flash memory on the Wild card is 24Mb. DKC needs more. My PAL DKC cart also won't work on the Super Famicom either. So no DKC for me.

Retr0gamer

Augmerson wrote: »

But I just really want to impress upon you the joy of playing a 17% faster version of that game of games - Donkey Kong Country...

Ha! You aren't going to get me with that one. Also you are wrong, the best way to play DKC is on a PAL SNES. Rare being british put effort into the PAL release and it runs at full speed with increased resolution.

Augmerson

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Ha! You aren't going to get me with that one. Also you are wrong, the best way to play DKC is on a PAL SNES. Rare being british put effort into the PAL release and it runs at full speed with increased resolution.

/me shakes fist at Retr0...."why you!"

o1s1n

HAHAHA ah, you really have to be a geek to appreciate the hilarity of that.

Gummy Panda

Yay!

Not retro but i got a new copy of Advance Wars Dual Strike for DS off ebay. This game is well out of print.

I thought it might be the buyer being creative by saying new but it defo is. No save files, manual is still factory pressed and there is even a nintendo VIP 24/7 scratch card for stars.

Really happy as this is a great title.

Augmerson

Gummy Panda wrote: »

Yay!

Not retro but i got a new copy of Advance Wars Dual Strike for DS off ebay. This game is well out of print.

I thought it might be the buyer being creative by saying new but it defo is. No save files, manual is still factory pressed and there is even a nintendo VIP 24/7 scratch card for stars.

Really happy as this is a great title.

That was my favourite DS game by far, loved it to bits, really absorbing gameplay.

CiDeRmAn

Well, actually did Stunt Race FX, even though I slagged off the 3D handling of the Snes vs Megadrive, it was a very colourful, character filled game, lots of fun, whilst VR Racing, while undoubtedly a technical tour de force, lacked that fun factor.
Same thing seperated Burnout from Race Pro, but then there's room in the world for both.