SONIC THE HEDGEHOG PORTED TO THE SUPER NINTENDO

[Punisher5.0]

1 hour ago, Leeroy ST said:

Capcom never released a Megadrive port of Mega Man X lol what?

It's a homebrew with zero time and space constraints.

[Leeroy ST]

10 minutes ago, Punisher5.0 said:

It's a homebrew with zero time and space constraints.

That makes less sense in the context of the post I was quoting, qhich implied Capcom made a Megadrive version with voices because the SNES "couldn't" but I'm sure someone could.

[Lost Monkey]

On 8/21/2020 at 3:14 PM, Black_Tiger said:

 

That's why the Mega Drive port of Mega Man X included voice samples. Because the SNES couldn't do it.

 

?

Edited August 24, 2020 by Lost Monkey

[Tanooki]

On 8/23/2020 at 8:19 PM, No One You Know said:

Ah. I do see SNES stuff in CEXes (they move stuff around between their warehouses and stores across the country s you always see a good variety of stuff though at high prices). Moreso than NES stuff too though there is a bit of that. They have MD stuff but rarely master system. Some game gear stuff too.  ...  So at least Nintendo 64 was reasonably popular here. I have seen a NES for sale in the wild once and didn't buy it I think because it was console only and because it was in brick lane market in whitechapel in london which my dad advised me meant it was probably broken. This is also how I didn't buy a boxed N64 for £20, though TBH there always was the chance it was broken despite being boxed. I got some GBA games there (Yoshis island and mario kart super circuit) though and they worked.

Well that actually really doesn't all that much surprise me.  The SNES they tried fairly hard but gave up first there too which is there is a richer in some ways PAL library there than in the US, such as PALCOM who gave some good Konami love with translated Parodius, Twinbee, and Twinbee Rainbow Bell Adventure which are all excellent and there were others from others.  Yet, since it was pulled earlier, those 1995-97 releases all but dried up, so until digital e-shop stuff happened PAL (you) were denied Mario RPG, Earthbound, Chrono Trigger, Street Fighter Alpha 2, Kirby's Dream Land 3, and I think Kirby Super Star as well as some notable examples.  Yet think back, Sega decided to basically stab their based in the back, then if that wasn't bad enough, slit their own throats right after in the 90s.  First dividing and angering people with the 32X and pulling it, then the SegaCD and much the same, then the Saturn bombed and didn't penetrate well outside of Japan and barely ok in the US.  Their response to cancel the 8/16bit distractions (GG and Genesis/MD) like that would force people to buy their shitty console PS1 was crushing(as was N64) and it backfired.  So where Sega had a solid console wall of interest in the PAL areas, Saturn folded and Nintendo with the N64 filled the vacuum for those who wanted nothing to do with unproven Sony at that point still as their first year to two of console games were mostly mediocre or crap, but the wow power of the CD got many on board.  Handheld though Gameboy was basically it a global dominance, had it's best overall market cut in the states which was like at over 1/3 of the market for a period...so the fact you can find many GB to GBA items in your region is no surprise, and even Nintendo threw some bones your way we got denied or released later too which sucked.  I've imported a few EUR titles for handheld, and console too, I've got your Doshin the Giant and a Freeloader disc to fire it up on my Gamecube.

[Video]

Could have sworn sonic had been translated/ported decades ago.

 

I remember the "but snes can't do that speed blah blah blah" from bitd, and while I forget the exact level, I used to always point to a particular level on smw which indeed ran at an insane speed (faster than sonic tbh) but I've not played in over a decade so I forget now.

 

Super Mario world doesn't particularly do anything that wouldn't work on genesis, it just wouldn't be as pretty being dropped to a 64 color palate.

 

As for super Mario 64 on psx, doesn't that system do like twice the polygons of the 64? Still, that rather ugly crooked polygon thing the psx does, especially towards the screen edge.

[Steven Pendleton]

18 minutes ago, Video said:

Could have sworn sonic had been translated/ported decades ago.

You know, I thought the same thing, actually... maybe not decades ago, but I thought it had happened by now as well. Maybe I'm just going crazy. Anyway, Sonic 1 does absolutely nothing that the SFC/SNES can't handle (aside from 320 resolution, I guess), so if not, I'm honestly surprised that it took this long.

18 minutes ago, Video said:

Super Mario world doesn't particularly do anything that wouldn't work on genesis, it just wouldn't be as pretty being dropped to a 64 color palate.

Does anyone know what the average amount of colors on screen in Super Mario World is?

 

I think it would probably be mostly intact aside from any scaling or rotation, but you can probably do something that looks close enough. If you wanted it to be closer to 100% accurate to the original game, I suppose you could make it a 32XCD game to get the scaling and rotation of the CD and larger color palette of the 32X, assuming that that's how it works. You could even just take lossless recordings of the music and play those back as CD audio. The music would probably loop, but I guess it would work.

Edited August 27, 2020 by Steven Pendleton

[No One You Know]

On 8/25/2020 at 2:57 AM, Tanooki said:

Well that actually really doesn't all that much surprise me.  The SNES they tried fairly hard but gave up first there too which is there is a richer in some ways PAL library there than in the US, such as PALCOM who gave some good Konami love with translated Parodius, Twinbee, and Twinbee Rainbow Bell Adventure which are all excellent and there were others from others.  Yet, since it was pulled earlier, those 1995-97 releases all but dried up, so until digital e-shop stuff happened PAL (you) were denied Mario RPG, Earthbound, Chrono Trigger, Street Fighter Alpha 2, Kirby's Dream Land 3, and I think Kirby Super Star as well as some notable examples.  Yet think back, Sega decided to basically stab their based in the back, then if that wasn't bad enough, slit their own throats right after in the 90s.  First dividing and angering people with the 32X and pulling it, then the SegaCD and much the same, then the Saturn bombed and didn't penetrate well outside of Japan and barely ok in the US.  Their response to cancel the 8/16bit distractions (GG and Genesis/MD) like that would force people to buy their shitty console PS1 was crushing(as was N64) and it backfired.  So where Sega had a solid console wall of interest in the PAL areas, Saturn folded and Nintendo with the N64 filled the vacuum for those who wanted nothing to do with unproven Sony at that point still as their first year to two of console games were mostly mediocre or crap, but the wow power of the CD got many on board.  Handheld though Gameboy was basically it a global dominance, had it's best overall market cut in the states which was like at over 1/3 of the market for a period...so the fact you can find many GB to GBA items in your region is no surprise, and even Nintendo threw some bones your way we got denied or released later too which sucked.  I've imported a few EUR titles for handheld, and console too, I've got your Doshin the Giant and a Freeloader disc to fire it up on my Gamecube.

Ah. Right. Sony would have had universal brand recognition too anyway even if not proven in video games consoles. Yeah most of the early games (like a lot that were multiplat with saturn) are a bit rubbish. I have the PS1 version of Rayman which is meant to be good but I find it a bit frustrating and not that fun other than the music. I actually got a PAL Saturn for an OK price here. Yeah GBA is much newer so I was thinking less about that than game boy. I don't know if i have ever seen anything mega CD or 32x at all. on ebay much of the 32x stuff is copies of doom or virtua racing or a machine sold internationally from japan, probably new old stock or something as I don't picture them being popular there. Apparently they sold more than the Jag, another near nonexistent machine. I actually saw one of the those in CEX though probably brought in from another part of the country. The person on ebay I bought my lynx from I also saw later selling a jag. Nothing to do with total sales but for some reason I would have expected Atari to have sold more lynxes and jags here with better brand recognition.

 

Yeah lots of people love the saturn and i have one but I'm not really a massive fan. Good for RPGs apparently but I'm not really into those. Fighters I like better (street fighter alpha 2 on SNES? Are you sure) but they are not my favourite thing. Most of the other things aren't very good in my opinion. Sega rally won't suck you in for ages and most of the multiplats are a bit mediocre. It's not like Sonic x-treme came out. Sonic R is too short and hard to control. Sonic 3D I like but that's just one game. Nintendo 64 on the other hand has tonnes of great games but apparently very little RPGs or 2D fighters so the polar opposite pretty much and by far my preferred machine. But yet I have always preferred mega drive to SNES. I have put my saturn away and put my dreamcast back that was in its position before after testing it again and finding it working again (temporamental, probably power supply fault that i should probably fix before using too much). Dreamcast has a much better library than Saturn in my opinion probably for the same reasons I like the N64's. The PAL gamecube versions of Pikmin 1 and 2 are meant to be non 50hz fixed right? Must be the last?

12 hours ago, Video said:

Could have sworn sonic had been translated/ported decades ago.

 

I remember the "but snes can't do that speed blah blah blah" from bitd, and while I forget the exact level, I used to always point to a particular level on smw which indeed ran at an insane speed (faster than sonic tbh) but I've not played in over a decade so I forget now.

 

Super Mario world doesn't particularly do anything that wouldn't work on genesis, it just wouldn't be as pretty being dropped to a 64 color palate.

 

As for super Mario 64 on psx, doesn't that system do like twice the polygons of the 64? Still, that rather ugly crooked polygon thing the psx does, especially towards the screen edge.

Yeah. Some people point to F-Zero too. I think you are thinking of the hack of the speedy gonzales game in terms of the sonic port? Though I'm sure I remember seeing screenshots of a SNES port of sonic 2 though those could of course be fake or a hack of sonic 2 to make it look how you would imagine the snes version or something. There is also a S-SMP conversion of the chemical plant theme that is almost perfect, and one of sonic CD stardust speedway past but those are on their own. There is also a super mario world hack I believe with sonic or something like that. Super Mario World I never thought looked particularly colourful. Of course it must have more colours on screen than the average mega drive game but what I mean is I don't think that much would be missed. I'm sure someone did do a port of either super mario world or super mario bros 3 or 2 (as in doki doki panic or whatever its called, not the actual second one). They definitely did one of the original SMB.

 

 

"Polygons per second" numbers I never really understood properly when they refer to rendering. When you see stats like for the PS2 emotion engine CPU, or the PS1 GTE (geometry transformation engine), or any CPU for that matter but usually stats are not given for them, that refers to transformation (manipulating the geometry for the viewpoint of the camera) were it would make sense for it to take the same for transforming each vertex or triangle regardless of the face size, as you are just doing calculations on points. However when you are talking about rendering saying "polygons per second" doesn't really tell you much as that would logically rely on the sizes of the polygons. The numbers often state different numbers for different shading methods and whether they are textured or not which makes you think that it is talking about rendering speeds rater than transformation speeds. Anyway, the quoted polygon per second number for the PS1 (360k vs 150k) I think are higher though that 360k number might be referring to flat shaded and the n64 150k number textured polygons. Of course the N64 has all the interpolation and filtering as well as drawing perspective correct (I think) so maybe it is a case of quality over quantity. Humans i always thought normally prefer something smudged or muffled to something pixelated or rough. Neither is preferable of course though. Apparently only certain developers changed the RCP "microcode" (I get the impression it is just the code running on the RSP telling the RDP what to do rather than anything deeper than that for some reason), which was required to run faster with lower quality. I assume they must mean specifically the RDP which draws polygons. So apparently you could turn off a lot of the filters and interpolation and stuff but the SGI designed graphics driver that most games apparently used didn't let you. I read somewhere a figure of "500k to 600k playstation quality polygons per second". Anyway I don't think the polygon counts on sm64 are too high for ps1, and I don't think the world sizes are either considering most of them are already separated from their sub levels. I would like to think you can do it but graphically it would be more like 64DS with higher poly counts if you wanted and rougher textures, higher res if you wanted, but the added PS1 exclusive of shivering polgyons that makes everything look like paper constructions. I think there are already PS1 games in the league world size wise of Sm64.

12 hours ago, Steven Pendleton said:

You know, I thought the same thing, actually... maybe not decades ago, but I thought it had happened by now as well. Maybe I'm just going crazy. Anyway, Sonic 1 does absolutely nothing that the SFC/SNES can't handle (aside from 320 resolution, I guess), so if not, I'm honestly surprised that it took this long.

Does anyone know what the average amount of colors on screen in Super Mario World is?

 

I think it would probably be mostly intact aside from any scaling or rotation, but you can probably do something that looks close enough. If you wanted it to be closer to 100% accurate to the original game, I suppose you could make it a 32XCD game to get the scaling and rotation of the CD and larger color palette of the 32X, assuming that that's how it works. You could even just take lossless recordings of the music and play those back as CD audio. The music would probably loop, but I guess it would work.

I'm sure the SNES can do 320 horizontal resolution but you can only have 2 16 colour backgrounds instead of 2 256 or 4 16 or something like that. Or its just preferred to stick to 256 because sprites are always displayed based on that resolution regardless of background resolution. I assume just no one must have actually tried making a conversion? It wouldn't really be fair to use a 32x or an scd/mcd because super mario world doesn't use a super fx or even an SA-1 or DSP or anything but I suppose your point is you could. If you did though you would only need one or the other. MCD can do scaling and rotation I believe on full screen scale. And it has an 8 channel sampler sound chip that should be perfectly sufficient to do all of the sound effects and music channels that the S-SMP would do without even having to resort to the MD's sound system or CD audio. Only thing would be you wouldn't have the interpolation, but that wouldn't be a problem for the same reason lack of compression wouldn't be a problem: you've got a CD. The 32x could do all the colours that would be harder to get out of the Mega CD (you can always use the light/shadow overlay trick but it would take considerable planning) and could do all of the scaling and rotation, and the sound. 32X does everything in software so you just have to program everything you need. I'm sure it is perfectly fast enough to do all the full screen scaling and rotation even whilst drawing another background in front or behind (which you could use the base MD for anyway in most cases as the 32x display can be in front or behind the finished MD output, just not sandwiched between too MD layers). If you look at what zarchos on youtube gets out of 8Mhz acorn archimedeses you will agree what I'm saying won't be too much of a stretch for two 23Mhz CPUs with a slightly higher instructions per clock number. I'm sure you could also do all the sampled sound on the 32x and as it is all in software you could probably even do the interpolation if you want it and have excess CPU time to waste and the compression if you are short on space.

 

Not actually Super Mario World but graphically (the main challenge) its about as good. Mulltiplats aren't identical so i suppose you would allow inaccuracies and imperfections.

You probably already knew about this but here is the unlicensed SMB1 as well:

 

Or even better - super mario world on NES:

 

Edited August 28, 2020 by No One You Know

[Tanooki]

Not quoting that monster.

I had a Saturn, it had some fun games, but the hardware had some real crippling shortcomings in performance, but also the games that ended up being supported on it.  Yet it was less crippled than the PS1 when it came to sheer sprite crunching, and also large flowing visuals such as those capcom brawlers especially those using the 4MB expansion memory cart.  I know Atari had some presence where you're at, but by the time the Lynx, and definitely the Jaguar came out, while they played it tough and blew good money in the US on asinine midnight time hour long infomercial garbage, it did little good so I think that failing impact choked the bravery out of them trying to fund another market, and one that would whine about wanting multiple languages included too.  Back on the Saturn though, while few, some of their excellent titles got early Windows 9X era releases that really ran and looked nicer, especially since they'd do at least 640x480.  For a time I had many, Daytona USA, Sega Rally, Touring Car, Sonic R, Virtua FIghting and Cop 2, Sonic & Knuckles, Sonic 3D Blast, Panzer Dragoon, and I know I'm forgetting a few.  I didn't have them but Manx TT, Bug, Last Bronx, made it there.  And while not Saturn a double pack (Sega Smash Pack Vol 1 and 2) of Gen/MD games hit the format too also on a CD.  Sega was smart in that day knowing the Saturn kind of outside Japan sucked pretty hard so they took some notable easier movers and dumped them to PC.

 

I don't ever really get when people choose the Genesis over the SNES as it makes little sense outside of select things.  They had a big target for their own stuff sure, if that's all you want, fine, but then sports games (theirs and EA) was about it, maybe other than what Treasure stuffed out and the random oddball PC conversion (Star Control, Dune, Test Drive.)  Early yeah, but Nintendo worked around it, as Sega did better with space shooters and early stuff like Gradius III could crawl or tear big graphics but once you get into Parodius 2/Sega Megaforce(Aleste) eras stuff came out it was a non argument.  Genesis had more sprites, but far less colors, tinny metallic and mostly with samples muffled audio, it just felt weak against it, and even the PC Engine too, though not so soundly so.  Oh and SFA2?  I've owned that since I bought a refurb off Nintendo in 96, it's fantastic, perfect no, but stunningly, it runs better than the PS1's abomination that only got made up for with Alpha 2 Gold after the fact.  The SNES game plays well, pretty good all around, it does have the audio decompression pauses and lower sample quality to fit the cart but it works.

[Steven Pendleton]

27 minutes ago, No One You Know said:

I'm sure the SNES can do 320 horizontal resolution but you can only have 2 16 colour backgrounds instead of 2 256 or 4 16 or something like that. Or its just preferred to stick to 256 because sprites are always displayed based on that resolution regardless of background resolution. I assume just no one must have actually tried making a conversion? It wouldn't really be fair to use a 32x or an scd/mcd because super mario world doesn't use a super fx or even an SA-1 or DSP or anything but I suppose your point is you could. If you did though you would only need one or the other. MCD can do scaling and rotation I believe on full screen scale. And it has an 8 channel sampler sound chip that should be perfectly sufficient to do all of the sound effects and music channels that the S-SMP would do without even having to resort to the MD's sound system or CD audio. Only thing would be you wouldn't have the interpolation, but that wouldn't be a problem for the same reason lack of compression wouldn't be a problem: you've got a CD. The 32x could do all the colours that would be harder to get out of the Mega CD (you can always use the light/shadow overlay trick but it would take considerable planning) and could do all of the scaling and rotation, and the sound. 32X does everything in software so you just have to program everything you need. I'm sure it is perfectly fast enough to do all the full screen scaling and rotation even whilst drawing another background in front or behind (which you could use the base MD for anyway in most cases as the 32x display can be in front or behind the finished MD output, just not sandwiched between too MD layers). If you look at what zarchos on youtube gets out of 8Mhz acorn archimedeses you will agree what I'm saying won't be too much of a stretch for two 23Mhz CPUs with a slightly higher instructions per clock number. I'm sure you could also do all the sampled sound on the 32x and as it is all in software you could probably even do the interpolation if you want it and have excess CPU time to waste and the compression if you are short on space.

Yes, I meant that you'd have to use both in order to get both the scaling and rotation of the CD and the colors of the 32X. I know how each of them works separately, but I'm not sure how they work together, especially since the only 32XCD games that exist are all just FMV trash.

 

Now that I think about it, I'd love to see Sonic on the PC Engine. I imagine that could do a very accurate port, complete with the proper 320 resolution since PC Engine can do that (and higher), but you'd have to do the parallax scrolling in software since the PC Engine can't do parallax in hardware. SuperGrafx could do it, though.

Edited August 28, 2020 by Steven Pendleton

[No One You Know]

16 minutes ago, Tanooki said:

Not quoting that monster.

I had a Saturn, it had some fun games, but the hardware had some real crippling shortcomings in performance, but also the games that ended up being supported on it.  Yet it was less crippled than the PS1 when it came to sheer sprite crunching, and also large flowing visuals such as those capcom brawlers especially those using the 4MB expansion memory cart.  I know Atari had some presence where you're at, but by the time the Lynx, and definitely the Jaguar came out, while they played it tough and blew good money in the US on asinine midnight time hour long infomercial garbage, it did little good so I think that failing impact choked the bravery out of them trying to fund another market, and one that would whine about wanting multiple languages included too.  Back on the Saturn though, while few, some of their excellent titles got early Windows 9X era releases that really ran and looked nicer, especially since they'd do at least 640x480.  For a time I had many, Daytona USA, Sega Rally, Touring Car, Sonic R, Virtua FIghting and Cop 2, Sonic & Knuckles, Sonic 3D Blast, Panzer Dragoon, and I know I'm forgetting a few.  I didn't have them but Manx TT, Bug, Last Bronx, made it there.  And while not Saturn a double pack (Sega Smash Pack Vol 1 and 2) of Gen/MD games hit the format too also on a CD.  Sega was smart in that day knowing the Saturn kind of outside Japan sucked pretty hard so they took some notable easier movers and dumped them to PC.

 

I don't ever really get when people choose the Genesis over the SNES as it makes little sense outside of select things.  They had a big target for their own stuff sure, if that's all you want, fine, but then sports games (theirs and EA) was about it, maybe other than what Treasure stuffed out and the random oddball PC conversion (Star Control, Dune, Test Drive.)  Early yeah, but Nintendo worked around it, as Sega did better with space shooters and early stuff like Gradius III could crawl or tear big graphics but once you get into Parodius 2/Sega Megaforce(Aleste) eras stuff came out it was a non argument.  Genesis had more sprites, but far less colors, tinny metallic and mostly with samples muffled audio, it just felt weak against it, and even the PC Engine too, though not so soundly so.  Oh and SFA2?  I've owned that since I bought a refurb off Nintendo in 96, it's fantastic, perfect no, but stunningly, it runs better than the PS1's abomination that only got made up for with Alpha 2 Gold after the fact.  The SNES game plays well, pretty good all around, it does have the audio decompression pauses and lower sample quality to fit the cart but it works.

Haha sorry! Yeah what I meant about atari was because at least when the Lynx came out STs would still have been popular. I still don't get what is meant to be so bad about the saturn's hardware other than gouraud shading not working properly because of the quads. Apparently the DSP is hard to program because you have to program it in assembly (microcode it I think would be the proper term in this context) and without that geometry transformation stuff won't be quite as fast as on playstation with its presumably easier to work with GTE, even with both SH2s working well together. The Saturn is meant to be able to draw properly perspective correct polygons apparently, the hardware taking depth into account, which is ironic as apparently the playstation doesn't do this and everyone tries to paint the saturn as "not designed for 3D" compared to the playstation. I understand the saturn is more capable in 2D because it actually has hardware parallax scrolling rather than a fixed framebuffer that you have to redraw everything over every frame, as well as drawing quads, but I can't see that 2D fighters like street fighter games can be anything that the playstation couldn't handle at full speed even if the method of graphics generation is more intensive and less efficient. What is meant to be so bad about alpha 2 on playstation? actually I should just watch a video shouldn't I. I understand that games like the X-men vs streetfighter game that need more RAM can't be done properly because the Ps1 has no provision for user RAM expansion.

 

Yeah I only actually own the windows versions of Sonic 3D and Sonic R (not counting on PS2 collection games) but I lost the disc for Sonic R. I only have a saturn because I encountered one at a good price. Other than that I might have wanted one to know I owned that actual hardware. Like why I would want a jag I think; that has even less good games at least at the present moment. I will have to take a look at SNES SFA2. I vaguely remember hearing about it. I remember there is a CPS1 version of the game too? I think I prefer Mega Drive because that is just the machine that got me into older video games. Sonic, all the other sega trash I suppose. Mega Drive is meant to be better than SNES for multiplats usually I thought? But on SNES the only exclusives I have ever found that interesting are probably star fox and yoshis island. I'm more of a synth guy so I usually prefer music on the mega drive and I don't really appreciate orchestral stuff but there is still a decent amount of SNES music I like. I prefer mega drive/genesis usually though. I have always wanted a PCE for some reason even though there aren't that many games I want for them and they weren't sold here. I think i just think the hardware is really cool and the physical console itself (japanese PC engines, not TG-16 though that is sort of cool in its own right but not as desirable). The whole wavetable thing is both sort of more limited and less limtied than Fm if you know what I mean. You can shape the repating waveform directly and you have many more hadware mixed channels that can be used for PCM streaming but the wavetables don't last as long before they repeat/can't be as high fidelity as you could with FM. The PCEs of course have like a million separate palettes that sprites and tiles can have so you can display even more colours on screen at once without palette swapping than even the SNES. However even though you can have colourful screens they still only have a master palette of 512 so I imagine the range of colours used will stay similar throughout games. The other major shortcoming is only one background layer. Linescroll is always possible in suitable landscapes but that isn't a magic fix all to all parallax scrolling problems as you can't have two things scrollibng on the same time. You can't really justify setting up the tilemap to just display a framebuffer that you draw backgrounds too repeatedly. So in the end you usually just have to give up and not have proper parallax scrolling unless it is supergrafx. I think you can only have 8 sprites on one line or something but I don't think anything else is much better. SNES has more sprites at once than MD right? I think its just that games that actually use that many sprites are the ones that actually suffer slowdown from game logic. House of the dead is on PC too I think.

[Tanooki]

I don't want to keep this off topic-ish stuff to keep going, so I'll keep it shorter this time.  Genesis had the rep for having better games when multi-platform, but it was as much a myth as fact.  It depended on the company making the game and which console they started the development on.  IF the game started on Sega, and the company decided to just cash in with a quicker port, the SNES games typically were done poorly to make a buck.  They'd port over all the assets as minimalist as possible when converting formats.  So the ports typically looked like Genesis games on SNES meaning less colors, poorer audio since the yamaha vs sony chips were nothing alike, and usually they didn't run as nice so they'd cut parts of stages or certain elements because they'd not bother optimizing the code.  But the same kind of could be said from a SNES to Genesis port, they'd tear out the extra colors, and just re-do the audio and it never was as rich or nice in either respect.  SO both parties basically got screwed depending on where the port started from if they didn't just co-develop them on their own.

 

And yes there are youtube videos that compare the SNES, Saturn and PS1, also files on gamefaqs that do it as well.  THe PS1 opening is a very poor quality FMV for one.  The little sparks that come off a heavy hit/special attack has the least of them on PS1, various other aesthetic bits, and strangely it chopped more (less fluid) on PS1 too which is bizarre as the CD wasn't exactly lacking for room like the SNES chip on the carts.  I think the PS1 had some obnoxious load screen placement and times too the Saturn minimized or lacked and SNES had them less too only decompressing the audio for about 4sec before the fights and a momentary pause back into the map/character screen.

[No One You Know]

45 minutes ago, Steven Pendleton said:

Yes, I meant that you'd have to use both in order to get both the scaling and rotation of the CD and the colors of the 32X. I know how each of them works separately, but I'm not sure how they work together, especially since the only 32XCD games that exist are all just FMV trash.

 

Now that I think about it, I'd love to see Sonic on the PC Engine. I imagine that could do a very accurate port, complete with the proper 320 resolution since PC Engine can do that (and higher), but you'd have to do the parallax scrolling in software since the PC Engine can't do parallax in hardware. SuperGrafx could do it, though.

What I meant was that if you have the 32x you don't need the Mega CD at all except for CD storage and audio. The 32X would do everything you need on a game like this without needing anything else. I think the mega CD just draws to the mega drive's memory as it has the same colour limitations (i'm not really that sure about it though) but the 32x communicates with the base mega drive though the cart port, sends its sound in stereo through the two analogue sound pins in the cartridge port so you can hear it through the headphone port, but outputs video itself so it can have more colours, compiling its own display either over or under the mega drive's display depending on what software says which comes in through an AV in port from the base unit. I think it can all communicate. Mega CD doesn't have its own display afaik, it just uses the MDs. And 32x adds its own image to whatever comes from the other two.

 

YES! Sonic on PC engine would be great! I have dreamt about this before as well as sonic on Lynx (and sonic Cd on lynx and sonic CD on PCE CD). I don't think software parallax scrolling would work particularly well though it might be possible with really fine programming but still a waste of the built in scrolling and tilemapping. Doesn't the PCE do like 256, 374 and 512 or some odd selection like that, with nothing in between?

[No One You Know]

19 minutes ago, Tanooki said:

I don't want to keep this off topic-ish stuff to keep going, so I'll keep it shorter this time.  Genesis had the rep for having better games when multi-platform, but it was as much a myth as fact.  It depended on the company making the game and which console they started the development on.  IF the game started on Sega, and the company decided to just cash in with a quicker port, the SNES games typically were done poorly to make a buck.  They'd port over all the assets as minimalist as possible when converting formats.  So the ports typically looked like Genesis games on SNES meaning less colors, poorer audio since the yamaha vs sony chips were nothing alike, and usually they didn't run as nice so they'd cut parts of stages or certain elements because they'd not bother optimizing the code.  But the same kind of could be said from a SNES to Genesis port, they'd tear out the extra colors, and just re-do the audio and it never was as rich or nice in either respect.  SO both parties basically got screwed depending on where the port started from if they didn't just co-develop them on their own.

 

And yes there are youtube videos that compare the SNES, Saturn and PS1, also files on gamefaqs that do it as well.  THe PS1 opening is a very poor quality FMV for one.  The little sparks that come off a heavy hit/special attack has the least of them on PS1, various other aesthetic bits, and strangely it chopped more (less fluid) on PS1 too which is bizarre as the CD wasn't exactly lacking for room like the SNES chip on the carts.  I think the PS1 had some obnoxious load screen placement and times too the Saturn minimized or lacked and SNES had them less too only decompressing the audio for about 4sec before the fights and a momentary pause back into the map/character screen.

Yeah we (especially me) need to shorten things. Yeah you have a good point with the multiplats. I had a specific few games in mind though I think I was also thinking that all of them started on the MD as that was the less capable system and easier to port from rather than to, but because one or two things are superior on MD (resolution, CPU capability) it would usually come off slightly better in this situation with a good game on both platforms instead of ruining the game like if you started on atari St and ported to Amiga instead of the other way around (which would still yield a slow/windowed ST version, but not a bad Amiga version too like you would have if you made on ST and then quickly ported it). I'm sure SFA2 on playstation is much better than Amiga/st sf2. Choppiness would have nothing to do with CD size unless its a video. That's just all the visual effects and having to draw all the backgrounds over and over again every frame and maybe it is not optimised as well as the gold version. Unless you just mean there are less sprite frames which would be RAM?

I looked at SNES SFA2 and it is AMAZING, other than the music! But the intro is there and everything with full size characters!

Edited August 28, 2020 by No One You Know

[Steven Pendleton]

10 minutes ago, No One You Know said:

What I meant was that if you have the 32x you don't need the Mega CD at all except for CD storage and audio. The 32X would do everything you need on a game like this without needing anything else. I think the mega CD just draws to the mega drive's memory as it has the same colour limitations (i'm not really that sure about it though) but the 32x communicates with the base mega drive though the cart port, sends its sound in stereo through the two analogue sound pins in the cartridge port so you can hear it through the headphone port, but outputs video itself so it can have more colours, compiling its own display either over or under the mega drive's display depending on what software says which comes in through an AV in port from the base unit. I think it can all communicate. Mega CD doesn't have its own display afaik, it just uses the MDs. And 32x adds its own image to whatever comes from the other two.

 

YES! Sonic on PC engine would be great! I have dreamt about this before as well as sonic on Lynx (and sonic Cd on lynx and sonic CD on PCE CD). I don't think software parallax scrolling would work particularly well though it might be possible with really fine programming but still a waste of the built in scrolling and tilemapping. Doesn't the PCE do like 256, 374 and 512 or some odd selection like that, with nothing in between?

32X cannot do hardware scaling and rotation, so yes, you'd need the CD if you want to do it in hardware, because the CD can do hardware scaling and rotation.

 

PC Engine can do parallax in software (Dracula X, Magical Chase, etc.), but the SuperGrafx can do pretty much anything the Mega Genesis Drive can do since it has support for true parallax scrolling in hardware. PC Engine supports a lot of different resolutions, and some of those are above 320 for sure. I actually forget if it can do 320 or not so maybe I shouldn't have said it earlier, but I am pretty sure that it can.

[No One You Know]

2 minutes ago, Steven Pendleton said:

32X cannot do hardware scaling and rotation, so yes, you'd need the CD if you want to do it in hardware, because the CD can do hardware scaling and rotation.

 

PC Engine can do parallax in software (Dracula X, Magical Chase, etc.), but the SuperGrafx can do pretty much anything the Mega Genesis Drive can do since it has support for true parallax scrolling in hardware. PC Engine supports a lot of different resolutions, and some of those are above 320 for sure. I actually forget if it can do 320 or not so maybe I shouldn't have said it earlier, but I am pretty sure that it can.

32x cannot do anything in hardware. It cannot play back any kind of sound in hardware. it cannot draw or display sprites in hardware. It cannot draw polygons of any kind in hardware. All it can do in hardware is display a static image in a few different modes and output digital audio streamed by a CPU. Everything you do in software. Most games do just fine with this. PC programmers of the time would be used to doing everything in software too. If you take a look at BC racer and knuckles chaotix on 32x you will see all the effects you would need being used. Look at an archimedes game (or an ST game but it will be less impressive) where everything is drawn in software with only about a quarter of the power a 32x should have. All sound is software generated too but at least with the arch there is hardware 8 channel mixing where you have to mix it in software too with the 32x. Same sound-wise with the GBA.

 

I'll have to check out those PCE games you mentioned. Software parallax scrolling would be a waste of the resources you have for what you get but I suppose if you are just doing a 2D platformer like sonic and want it then the end result is the only thing that matters and you are not doing anything else that desperately needs that CPU time. From what I recall reading about it, it only does 3 fixed horizontal resolutions but you can pick almost any vertical resolution. Resolution doesn't really matter that badly. I suppose you would run in 384 res or whatever it is and if the player can see too much you pre-scale it with another program. Takes up more space but then it fits without losing detail?

[Steven Pendleton]

2 minutes ago, No One You Know said:

32x cannot do anything in hardware. It cannot play back any kind of sound in hardware. it cannot draw or display sprites in hardware. It cannot draw polygons of any kind in hardware. All it can do in hardware is display a static image in a few different modes and output digital audio streamed by a CPU. Everything you do in software. Most games do just fine with this. PC programmers of the time would be used to doing everything in software too. If you take a look at BC racer and knuckles chaotix on 32x you will see all the effects you would need being used. Look at an archimedes game (or an ST game but it will be less impressive) where everything is drawn in software with only about a quarter of the power a 32x should have. All sound is software generated too but at least with the arch there is hardware 8 channel mixing where you have to mix it in software too with the 32x. Same sound-wise with the GBA.

 

I'll have to check out those PCE games you mentioned. Software parallax scrolling would be a waste of the resources you have for what you get but I suppose if you are just doing a 2D platformer like sonic and want it then the end result is the only thing that matters and you are not doing anything else that desperately needs that CPU time. From what I recall reading about it, it only does 3 fixed horizontal resolutions but you can pick almost any vertical resolution. Resolution doesn't really matter that badly. I suppose you would run in 384 res or whatever it is and if the player can see too much you pre-scale it with another program. Takes up more space but then it fits without losing detail?

Yeah, like I said, I'd literally only want the 32X for the colors, if needed, and just let the CD do everything else since it can do all of that at hardware level. Other than for the colors, there'd be no need for the 32X for a Super Mario World port, but even then, Super Mario World doesn't seem to have many different colors on screen at once anyway, so it's possible that it might not be needed even for that.

 

As for Dracula X and Magical Chase, those are just a few examples of software parallax scrolling on the PC Engine. If you want real parallax, go play Aldynes on the SuperGrafx. Madou King Granzort has some as well (and I just played it 20 minutes ago so I know that it does), but it's not nearly as impressive as Aldynes.

[No One You Know]

6 minutes ago, Steven Pendleton said:

Yeah, like I said, I'd literally only want the 32X for the colors, if needed, and just let the CD do everything else since it can do all of that at hardware level. Other than for the colors, there'd be no need for the 32X for a Super Mario World port, but even then, Super Mario World doesn't seem to have many different colors on screen at once anyway, so it's possible that it might not be needed even for that.

 

As for Dracula X and Magical Chase, those are just a few examples of software parallax scrolling on the PC Engine. If you want real parallax, go play Aldynes on the SuperGrafx. Madou King Granzort has some as well (and I just played it 20 minutes ago so I know that it does), but it's not nearly as impressive as Aldynes.

Involving the CD is pointless if you have the 32x is what I mean. Scaling and rotation aren't things that take years to implement. Maybe with maximum efficiency, but you don't need that. If you didn't use the 32x then you would have reason to still involve the CD. But of course it would be preferable to use neither and it wouldn't be a disaster. Anything supergrafx is irrelevant really to the PCE parallax discussion. Of course you could do the parallax on a supergrafx, but as cool as it is, its not a stock pce. But of course you could do sonic flawlessly on it discounting sound for the moment. I had a look at aldynes and it only seems to start using the dual backgrounds in the second level. It doesn't particularly look like it makes the most of it but it is there. seems like it must use it more later on though. Magical chase is much more impressive though. Completely fluid.

[Steven Pendleton]

1 minute ago, No One You Know said:

Involving the CD is pointless if you have the 32x is what I mean. Scaling and rotation aren't things that take years to implement. Maybe with maximum efficiency, but you don't need that. If you didn't use the 32x then you would have reason to still involve the CD. But of course it would be preferable to use neither and it wouldn't be a disaster. Anything supergrafx is irrelevant really to the PCE parallax discussion. Of course you could do the parallax on a supergrafx, but as cool as it is, its not a stock pce. But of course you could do sonic flawlessly on it discounting sound for the moment. I had a look at aldynes and it only seems to start using the dual backgrounds in the second level. It doesn't particularly look like it makes the most of it but it is there. seems like it must use it more later on though. Magical chase is much more impressive though. Completely fluid.

Yes, you could do all of the scaling and rotation in software if you wanted, but I'm sure the devs would rather do it in hardware if they could since it saves time and is easier. You could probably do Super Mario World on a regular Mega Genesis Drive with no problem, especially since there are very few instances of scaling or rotation that I remember. It's been 2~3 months since I played it, though, so I forget if there's much beyond the final boss.

 

I don't see how the SuperGrafx being irrelevant because it's not a stock PC Engine has anything to do with it since adding a 32X or a Mega-CD to the Mega Genesis Drive makes it not stock, as well, unless you used the Wondermega or the CDX. As I mentioned, though, you could do a near perfect port of Sonic on the SuperGrafx, with only the audio being different. The PC Engine's sound chip has the ability to sound ridiculously close to the YM2612, as well, so it would be a very nice port overall.

 

As for Aldynes, it seems you didn't make it to stage 3, because that's when it starts.

[Punisher5.0]

1 hour ago, Steven Pendleton said:

Yes, you could do all of the scaling and rotation in software if you wanted, but I'm sure the devs would rather do it in hardware if they could since it saves time and is easier. You could probably do Super Mario World on a regular Mega Genesis Drive with no problem, especially since there are very few instances of scaling or rotation that I remember. It's been 2~3 months since I played it, though, so I forget if there's much beyond the final boss.

 

I don't see how the SuperGrafx being irrelevant because it's not a stock PC Engine has anything to do with it since adding a 32X or a Mega-CD to the Mega Genesis Drive makes it not stock, as well, unless you used the Wondermega or the CDX. As I mentioned, though, you could do a near perfect port of Sonic on the SuperGrafx, with only the audio being different. The PC Engine's sound chip has the ability to sound ridiculously close to the YM2612, as well, so it would be a very nice port overall.

 

As for Aldynes, it seems you didn't make it to stage 3, because that's when it starts.

Minus the boss fights (most use mode 7) the Genesis should have no problem with SMW.

[Steven Pendleton]

24 minutes ago, Punisher5.0 said:

Minus the boss fights (most use mode 7) the Genesis should have no problem with SMW.

Oops, I forgot about those! I guess you could just have them disappear when they die or something instead of spinning if you really wanted to. This thing I found (it calls itself Super Mario World, but it's definitely not!) pretty much shows that the color palette from the 16-bit versions of SMB 1-3 should mostly be 100% intact with the 61/64 color limit, too, so I think the base system should be able to handle Super Mario World with no problem. The audio on this is not great, but I suppose it's also not CrazyBus, so I can't complain too much.

 

 

Edited August 28, 2020 by Steven Pendleton

[No One You Know]

10 hours ago, Steven Pendleton said:

Yes, you could do all of the scaling and rotation in software if you wanted, but I'm sure the devs would rather do it in hardware if they could since it saves time and is easier. You could probably do Super Mario World on a regular Mega Genesis Drive with no problem, especially since there are very few instances of scaling or rotation that I remember. It's been 2~3 months since I played it, though, so I forget if there's much beyond the final boss.

 

I don't see how the SuperGrafx being irrelevant because it's not a stock PC Engine has anything to do with it since adding a 32X or a Mega-CD to the Mega Genesis Drive makes it not stock, as well, unless you used the Wondermega or the CDX. As I mentioned, though, you could do a near perfect port of Sonic on the SuperGrafx, with only the audio being different. The PC Engine's sound chip has the ability to sound ridiculously close to the YM2612, as well, so it would be a very nice port overall.

 

As for Aldynes, it seems you didn't make it to stage 3, because that's when it starts.

Well you are not getting your extra colours without drawing on the 32x, unless the CD can draw to 32x RAM. I suppose you are right. Supergrafx is fair then for this conversation. I just get annoyed sometimes when people bring up things like that as if they are a magic solution but I suppose your point is just that there would be no problems there. Out of interest how close have you heard a PCE sound to a YM2612? In theory you could just sample the full repeating FM loop and use it as a wavetable but with only 32 sampling points that would have to be low resolution and pretty rough if you are not intervening with the CPU, not to mention the 5 bit depth. I suppose it is only important that it sounds similar. Can you have one of the oscillators alternate between playing a wavetable and then muting for the next loop of the wavetable so you have two channels playing one 64 sample wavetable? I suppose the CPU is reasonably fast especially when compared to the SNES so you could do software sound though that probably would be hard to as well as software parallax. I will have to look at aldynes again then.

8 hours ago, Steven Pendleton said:

Oops, I forgot about those! I guess you could just have them disappear when they die or something instead of spinning if you really wanted to. This thing I found (it calls itself Super Mario World, but it's definitely not!) pretty much shows that the color palette from the 16-bit versions of SMB 1-3 should mostly be 100% intact with the 61/64 color limit, too, so I think the base system should be able to handle Super Mario World with no problem. The audio on this is not great, but I suppose it's also not CrazyBus, so I can't complain too much.

 

 

What were we talking about with regards to scaling and rotation if we weren't talking about the boss fights? I sent a link to a video of that game in an earlier reply but it was an edit i did almost immediately after so you must not have seen it (as well as SMB1 on mega drive which is not really relevant but also a pretty good version of SMW for NES.). Graphically it shows it can do the job other than the boss fights which you could do with column shifting like in the pirate boss in puggsy but just wouldn't look as good, or something more fancy like in red zone. The sound is just typical for the machine. Its not great but not that bad. Just be glad you can actually hear the instruments unlike some GEMS things with bass sounds for main instruments.

Edited August 28, 2020 by No One You Know

[Steven Pendleton]

1 hour ago, No One You Know said:

Out of interest how close have you heard a PCE sound to a YM2612?

https://youtu.be/qOWXaQaPVI4

[+Black_Tiger]

2 hours ago, No One You Know said:

of interest how close have you heard a PCE sound to a YM2612

Tricky, Moto Roader 1 & 2, Nadia, Fiend Hunter, Sword Master, Fire Pro Wrestling 2, Lapras no Ma, Cyber Dodge and Dead Moon are some that have bgms that sound similar to Mega Drive games.

[Leeroy ST]

Wasn't there someone who was doing a Lynx port attempt a long ago? What ever happened to them?

[Tanooki]

Wow Sonic 2 Chemical Plant Zone on PCE that's on point.  You'd really have to have a well trained ear to the original to start nitpicking some little details on where you have differences.