A Sprite

My opinion has technical reality to back it up you screen shots are jsut that...an illusion to what is really going on. screenshots? how about owning both systems and comparing them. most people on the forum would agree with me that the n64 games look better than the jag. maybe if you ever owned an n64 you'd understand what i mean. I own the N64, have seen the Jag in action vicariously. Let me offer you a story - You're given two CDs. One is of a band hitting a few notes, joking, bits and pieces of potential heard, but they sound suspiciously like someone put a cassette tape to their TV's mono speaker for a home movie warm-up session. They could be anyone, really. They really need to hire a new agent. The other is a series of tracks of all the latest mixes from all the best ever in the industry. Of course you're going to go with the second as being the superior listening experience...but what of that first band? Who were they? What songs could they have presented to the industry, with the right management? Assume the people presenting this CD to you, really didn't give a damn what happened to the band. A wedding gig is as good as a contract. This is what happened to the Jaguar. You can't tell what it can do, based on what you've heard. Gorf's admitted even with it's potential, it'll be limited to the polycount of early Saturn games - but texture-wise, it's ahead of the competition already. Look at what textures did for Virtua Fighter vs. Remix, and you'll get an idea of how big of a potential the cat in the toilet was hiding all this time. being in the music biz, this is really not a good analogy. i understand the point though. as a producer, i listen to the song first regardless of the recording. many great bands and artists with great music have crappy recordings. on the other hand, there's a lot of "garbage" pop music that have some amazing recordings. if i had to make analogy to music, the jag had a couple of great songs with great recordings for the time, and the rest were either mediocre or junk. could we say that the jag could write better songs and play technically better? you could, but that has not been proven yet. until then, the jag is what it is. Fair enough, but in defense of my analogy, you missed the key point - I didn't say you got a crappy recording of great music, I said you got a crappy recording of talented guys goofing off. Looking over the records of who actually tried to do anything like their best effort, even given the lack of support Atari offered, I see Alien vs. Predator, BattleSphere, Tempest 2000, and Rayman, with Protector SE being a nice retro back-up. All were first generation software, made without real developer tools. Perhaps a better analogy would be for an artist to spend a few minutes figuring out how to use the midi potential of their new software, hammer out a decent remix of their best work, and rush it out as a complete album in order to satisfy a penny pinching studio head, who still reads all the stories written on him a decade before. Read how Carmack tossed together Doom, and tell me we're seeing anything close to what the hardware can do. Even 3DO, with lower specs, was able to knock out Need for Speed.

My opinion has technical reality to back it up you screen shots are jsut that...an illusion to what is really going on. screenshots? how about owning both systems and comparing them. most people on the forum would agree with me that the n64 games look better than the jag. maybe if you ever owned an n64 you'd understand what i mean. I own the N64, have seen the Jag in action vicariously. Let me offer you a story - You're given two CDs. One is of a band hitting a few notes, joking, bits and pieces of potential heard, but they sound suspiciously like someone put a cassette tape to their TV's mono speaker for a home movie warm-up session. They could be anyone, really. They really need to hire a new agent. The other is a series of tracks of all the latest mixes from all the best ever in the industry. Of course you're going to go with the second as being the superior listening experience...but what of that first band? Who were they? What songs could they have presented to the industry, with the right management? Assume the people presenting this CD to you, really didn't give a damn what happened to the band. A wedding gig is as good as a contract. This is what happened to the Jaguar. You can't tell what it can do, based on what you've heard. Gorf's admitted even with it's potential, it'll be limited to the polycount of early Saturn games - but texture-wise, it's ahead of the competition already. Look at what textures did for Virtua Fighter vs. Remix, and you'll get an idea of how big of a potential the cat in the toilet was hiding all this time.

I think I'm the only one here bored enough to try to play every Gameboy game ever made... Here's one - youth violence caused by militant nationalists. Super Dodge Ball Advance is like the week after a World Cup, in your hands. Show your hometown pride, and eliminate all pretenders. Their home towns are just pale imitations of your real thing...

Lets say it looks more Amiga than C64. BTW, some games on the GBA, speaking of screenshots, look like early PS1 games. That's because some of them are. Rayman Advance is a port of the game that nearly became the Jaguar's Mario, before it was ported over to the PSX, Saturn, PC, and N-Gage. This version has the worst graphics and the worst sound (it resembles a happy car alarm whistling it's way to Smurf Village), but the play is perfect, especially if you were a masochistic fan of the Amiga's harder games. Wing Commander: Prophecy is the closest you'll come to Star Wars on the GBA, beating out generic clones like Star X and Flight of the Falcon. The other versions have moving video. This version has the ability to speed through the text. Which is better, is a matter of personal preference. Super Puzzle Fighter 2 isn't a sequel, despite the name. Considered one of the best puzzle games ever made, it's still being sold on consoles today. In case you can't tell, we're still not finished going through all the good games...

In the end, it's a choice of what you need. Tomb Raider: Legends looks and feels like playing with cheap action figures, but in the strictest technical terms, has good graphics. Tomb Raider: Prophecy plays like the actual console games, but looks like a great C64 game.

Better than ever. See this? 10 tons of ancient rock have shattered her skull, her brain is a foamy pudding exiting out her ears and eye sockets, and yet she doesn't even flinch. Her sprite doesn't even blink - she's able to take the pain. The meter gives her away, but this is a Laura Croft who worries about the player's feelings first. It's all about the nostalgia...

All true, but at the same time, look at this: A good team will create a good game, no matter how many of their limbs you cut off - they'll program with their tongues, if need be. Gouge out their eyes, and they'll have their seeing eye dogs bark out the right pixel coordinates. You can rip off their noses, carve out a lung, pull off their fingernails and force feed them to their cats; it doesn't matter, ask EA these are all good motivational tools during crunch time - just make sure they have good tools to work with, and the check is good... Bad math offends them.

Hello?

IQ...dropping... Polycounts per second are law. Bzzt. A Spectrum can never handle a C64 game. Genesis and SNES and PC Engine are all better than each other! The lion must never lie down with the lamb! Peanut butter AND chocolate!? AIIEEEE MY BRAIN. The voices are eating my brain!!!!!!!!!!! Call me stupid, but what exactly do you mean? LOL... That it's stupid to say any game from any generation couldn't be done on another console from that same generation. You might suffer from downgraded graphics, but the best looking Gamecube game, Resident Evil 4, was ported over to PS2 in playable form. The best looking Dreamcast game, Soul Calibur, was given a sequel for PS2, with only the textures taking a hit to detail, owing to the PS2's limited video memory...which was covered up by the ever alert art team using an impressionist style in place of a realistic one. GT4 for the Dreamcast would suffer from less polygons, but the detail on the textures would improve - picture no pedestrians, but all the street signs would be readable from a distance.

Based on what criteria? Simply LOOK at GT4...The DC did create some pretty killer 3D...but not in the same league as something like GT4. Not to mention, GT4 is just such a MASSIVE game... I'm kinda doubting you own GT4 though for some reason... It really is a beautiful, life-like game... DC can't touch it, sorry. For that matter XBOX doesn't have a better looking game than GT4... Maybe equal, but not better... You're right. Neither X-Box or Gamecube has a better looking driving game. Of course, neither X-Box or Gamecube has a driving game with road textures that blurry up close, either. What is this, Nintendo 64? Dreamcast could do better without breaking a sweat. Could you imagine if the same art and programming teams were turned loose on it? Bleem dosen't count.

IQ...dropping... Polycounts per second are law. Bzzt. A Spectrum can never handle a C64 game. Genesis and SNES and PC Engine are all better than each other! The lion must never lie down with the lamb! Peanut butter AND chocolate!? AIIEEEE MY BRAIN. The voices are eating my brain!!!!!!!!!!!

spiffyone - take a look at this - Same game. Same generation. Now compare any two screen shots of Alpha 3 from Playstation and Saturn, and you can see kevincal's point... Both of you need to ease up a bit. You're forgetting that words over the internet have no tonal context to soften them, and are reading way too much nastiness where there is none into each other's words. spiffyone - kevincal apologized for getting nasty earlier. Let it go. kevincal - just because spiffyone thinks you're very wrong, doesn't mean you're under attack. This has been fun to watch, but now it's just a little ugly. Let's not turn this into Rob vs Gorf - you guys are too smart to fall into this, okay?

This is getting silly, guys. Subtract the 4 meg cart, and the PSX and the Saturn are nearly equal in terms of potential to handle the 2D games available...for that generation. Most of the 2D games were still created on aging arcade hardware. The vs. series reveals the PSX's weaknesses: there's no way clever programming can get around the ridiculous sprite demands - can you imagine if both systems attempted Street Fighter 3?

How did Rogue Squadron become our benchmark? The GBA without being built for 3D, can handle that style of game...

GameFan...that brings back memories. Probably the only people who championed Bubsy 3D over Sonic CD... Thank God they're still making magazines... we need unique viewpoints.

The problem is you guys just played it for about 30 minutes. That's not really enough time to know what a game is all about. God of War is one of my favs right along Ninja Gaiden Black/Sigma, The Prince of Persias and Resident Evil series. GOD does have a lot of buttom mashing, but more complex and powerful combos come along latter in the game along with some decent puzzle and great storytelling and cutscenes. Hades was Hell. In every sense of the word. I was unmoved by the game's depiction of a man who murders his own family...until I realized why it was so personal to it's creator. I can't call it anything special...save that it takes risks Rockstar is afraid to, and there is more emotion in every frame than many games offer in their entirety. And then there is the Temple of Pandora... It's odd. I hated the game, until I read this thread, looking over the reasons others hated it, and then I realized why it made me care... It doesn't always live up to it's potential... But sometimes it surpasses it. Give it a chance. Play it through. It's not the same game in the end, as you meet when you begin.

Don't make Trip smack a bitch. See that? Trip knows what you need, baby. He hurts you because he cares.

Go here.

Yep. Good job A Sprite. You just did something what'shisname failed to do for how many pages now? DoDonPachi is indeed not as good on Saturn as it is on PSone. Neither is In the Hunt, btw. SOTN, though, is iffy. Transparencies aren't as good on Saturn, naturally, but there's the extra character that you just can't ignore. Then again, it was a JP release only. So I'll give the PSone version extra points just for being in English. Always nice to hear what ol' Drac has to say before tearing a hole in him. It's like catching up with an old friend. 1. You caught In the Hunt. Not bad; I was saving that one... 2. The Saturn version of Castlevania also features butchered art, owing to the developer simply throwing the original Playstation graphics onto a higher resolution Saturn mode, without changing a single pixel. There are more frequent and longer load times, and the bonus quest is a small extra, since the only real changes are a new sprite and a lack of leveling up.

Actually, I think it's more like 4:3. I've fixed it to 5:3, removed the grid lines, and changed the colors based on a screen capture I have of the Atari 8-bit computer's palette-- but I think the colors look too washed-out; on my TV, my 2600 and 7800 have much more saturated colors (although of course the colors will vary from console to console based on the color phase shift or pot setting, and from TV to TV based on the brightness/contrast/color/tint settings). Leaving aside the question of whether the number of colors is doable in bB, the main issue is still the pixel aspect ratio. On the 2600, the smallest pixel size for a player pixel is 1 color clock wide by 1 scan line tall, which has an aspect ratio of 5:3. I actually did a test screen last night and displayed it on my 2600 and TV using a Krokodile Cartridge, and sure enough, a large rectangle 24 color clocks across and 40 scan lines tall was just about precisely square. That reduces to 3 across by 5 down, from which it follows that each pixel has an aspect ratio of 5:3. Anyway, batari Basic uses a 2-line kernel, which means the smallest player pixel is actually *2* scan lines tall, as opposed to *1* scan line tall, so the smallest player pixel in bB has an aspect ratio of 5:6 (basically two pixels stacked on top of each other). At least, that's the smallest player pixel size if you use one of the two "canned" kernels (the standard kernel and the multisprite kernel). So that would make the sprite look stretched vertically, as follows: That actually doesn't look too bad, and you could always remove a row of pixels here and there to adjust the sprite so it looks less stretched. Now, the 2600 can display a player at three different widths-- single-wide (each pixel is 1 color clock wide), double-wide (each pixel is 2 color clocks wide), or quadruple-wide (each pixel is 4 color clocks wide). Thus, you could switch to double-wide player graphics and get the 5:3 pixel aspect ratio. But if you do that, you can only use one copy of the player, because the 2600 can only draw multiple copies of a player on a given scan line if the player is single-wide. I think MausBoy wants to have up to three copies of a player, at least that's how the enemies are displayed in Dragon Warrior-- there can be one, two, or three enemies displayed, and they are not necessarily just copies of the same enemy. So a double-wide, or even quadruple-wide, player would be fine if only one enemy is displayed, or if the other player sprite is drawn single-wide for the other enemy (or other two enemies). Of course, you can also overlay two players, and use different resolutions for each, like a double-wide player on the bottom layer, and a single-wide player on the top layer. And you can position playfield pixels behind the player (or behind two overlaid players) to get additional colors. Or you can position the two players side-by-side to get a 16-pixel sprite, and have two or three copies of each, to get one, two, or three 16-pixel sprites. And if you're using bB's standard kernel, you can change the player colors from one row to the next, or change the playfield color. So there are a number of options available that will affect the kind of sprites you could design, and you should probably try your hand at creating sprite designs that would make use of various combinations of options. Michael 1. You are awe inspiring, good sir. 2. Ninja kitten looks better stretched out. Pick up a kitten. Same expression. Same taffy like consistency. 3. How did you remove the grid, stretch it out, etc? I'm grateful for your hard work, but I wouldn't take advantage of your generous nature. 4. Maus_boy may have to answer this one. Since this is set in a lab, some of the enemies should be humans. Since this is a JRPG style, it needs bosses. Since it's an Atari 2600, it's small sprites only. But, what if there were larger characters presented with flickering lights (and thunder noises) or in the form of a laser scanner running over their bodies, so that only a few rows of pixels are exposed at a time? Can this be realistically achieved, or would I be wasting my time designing near full screen sprites?

1. Ecks vs Sever 2 - Sequel to the game based on the worst movie ever reviewed in full by Rotten Tomatoes. ( 0% Fresh) Ironically, many consider it the best GBA 1st person shooter...depending on whether you prefer your combat slightly realistic, or prefer demons from Hell. 2. Doom 1&2 - How do you feel about censorship? 3. Duke Nukem - Now you can pretend to be a grown man pretending to be Bruce Campbell. Women talk to him!* 4. Dark Arena - Just look at that name. Ponder what it means. Did the game end before you got there? 5. Ice 9 - Linear, or the straight and narrow path? Lovely scenery though. *In other games. No, seriously. Money sometimes changes hands, but it counts. I never ever played Doom in its heydays, so all of this is a new gaming experience. Do you actually own and have played all the games you are mentioning in this thread? If yes, I call you the GBA God I never played the Hockey game.

I guess they thought $400 bought them texture mapping.

dude i missed ur post before i threw in castlevania sorry No worries, but you might want to be careful of Castlevania. I threw that one in as a gimme; there's a reason it's not as good, and it has nothing to do with the system's power.

1. Ecks vs Sever 2 - Sequel to the game based on the worst movie ever reviewed in full by Rotten Tomatoes. ( 0% Fresh) Ironically, many consider it the best GBA 1st person shooter...depending on whether you prefer your combat slightly realistic, or prefer demons from Hell. 2. Doom 1&2 - How do you feel about censorship? 3. Duke Nukem - Now you can pretend to be a grown man pretending to be Bruce Campbell. Women talk to him!* 4. Dark Arena - Just look at that name. Ponder what it means. Did the game end before you got there? 5. Ice 9 - Linear, or the straight and narrow path? Lovely scenery though. *In other games. No, seriously. Money sometimes changes hands, but it counts.

WTF??? Wait until you have a 3 year old daughter. All will be revealed.