My impressions with Sapphire

[Tatsujin]

sapphire is the definitive PCE tech-demo par excellence. but there're better shmups out there in terms of gameplay (GoT, WoT, Spriggan..). but anyway and beside of that, sapphire is one of my favorite shmups of all time, simply because it's just pure fun to see for what our so beloved system is capable and still can deal even with shmups on 32-bit systems in terms of action, dynamic and special effects.

seriously, all what we can gaze on sapphire was theoratically already possible on the core anno '87, in technical point of view, by side of the hucard-size which was to small at that time. the arcade card can handel 2MB of data, this makes a comparable 16-bit module. so for exapmle, if we put each level separately on a 20Mbit (street figher ce) hucard, we would be able to play sapphire (without T's music of course) on the first white core from '87 without any cut-backs in grafical and technical issues, i'm right? please correct me if i'm wrong with this theory

[termis]

sapphire is the definitive PCE tech-demo par excellence. but there're better shmups out there in terms of gameplay (GoT, WoT, Spriggan..). but anyway and beside of that, sapphire is one of my favorite shmups of all time, simply because it's just pure fun to see for what our so beloved system is capable and still can deal even with shmups on 32-bit systems in terms of action, dynamic and special effects.

seriously, all what we can gaze on sapphire was theoratically already possible on the core anno '87, in technical point of view, by side of the hucard-size which was to small at that time. the arcade card can handel 2MB of data, this makes a comparable 16-bit module. so for exapmle, if we put each level separately on a 20Mbit (street figher ce) hucard, we would be able to play sapphire (without T's music of course) on the first white core from '87 without any cut-backs in grafical and technical issues, i'm right? please correct me if i'm wrong with this theory

That sounds about right to me.  That is pretty impressive indeed.  From crap like Wonder Momo to technical tour-de-force like Spriggan, the PCE sure had a good span.

edit: I meant Sapphire instead of Spriggan, thought Spriggan is a pretty damn good game too.

[Turbo D]

I like wonder momo 

[shubibiman]

The thing with Sapphire's graphics is that they are not consistant. They sometimes look great, some other times, they merely look like crap (I hate this "lion" in level 2). To me, level one is the most beautiful. Still, I agree with most of your points.

[gundarN]

The thing with Sapphire's graphics is that they are not consistant. They sometimes look great, some other times, they merely look like crap (I hate this "lion" in level 2). To me, level one is the most beautiful. Still, I agree with most of your points.

Graphics can range from good to great for sure. The geometric enemies don't seem to sit well with a lot of the sprites. It's not terrible; just a little inconsistent.

[Black Tiger]

The thing with Sapphire's graphics is that they are not consistant. They sometimes look great, some other times, they merely look like crap (I hate this "lion" in level 2). To me, level one is the most beautiful. Still, I agree with most of your points.

Plus some enemies are jagged flat shaded polygons while others are nice detailed hand drawn artwork.

The only explanation I can think of, is that the evil invaders from the future are supposed to all be some kind of simple looking Tron race or something... and the rest of the enemies are just natural occuring creatures from each era that just happen to try to kill you.

Maybe the U.S. accidentally initiated the conflict at one point in time during a space mission and thats why you're attacking a space shuttle at the end of the game? 

I don't see the point of using prerendered polys if they're not going to all be smoothly animated or mixing them with real art. But apparently it was a great idea, since the game has become legendary on its graphics alone.

[grahf]

Well, the trick of course was to make it look like the system was rendering the polygons. If you made them look too fancy, they would loose their wow factor because you knew they were "fake". 

Too bad after all these years we know better.  I still dont find them too out of place though.