EGM #18 reader-letter + ed reply + pics of *supposed* SuperGrafx Strider

[Bonknuts]

Forget the SuperGrafx Strider where a pic never existed.  A more realistic dream is to wish for Tom's Strider palette color fix come to fruition one day.  Pics of these DID exist at one point (with awesome results, I might add), but unfortunately the project seems abandoned, and the pics lost...

 Tomaitheous has left the PCE scene. So I doubt you'll see anything specifically made for the public, from him.

If that's true then it sat in development hell for...what, 3 years? Maybe 4? That's possible, of course, but you'd think if they had it that long they would have just made a SuperCD out of the assets.

 Probably a good thing that they didn't, no? Forgotten Worlds, in my opinion, is a great game. It's SCD and it's a much better port than the more superior ACD tech game Strider.

[nat]

Forget the SuperGrafx Strider where a pic never existed.  A more realistic dream is to wish for Tom's Strider palette color fix come to fruition one day.  Pics of these DID exist at one point (with awesome results, I might add), but unfortunately the project seems abandoned, and the pics lost...

 Tomaitheous has left the PCE scene. So I doubt you'll see anything specifically made for the public, from him.

What makes you say that? Isn't this his website?

[Mathius]

Maybe one of us should email him about it. Bugging a person always gets results.

[SignOfZeta]

Probably a good thing that they didn't, no? Forgotten Worlds, in my opinion, is a great game. It's SCD and it's a much better port than the more superior ACD tech game Strider.

Strider ACD just isn't very well done. I'm not expert enough to understand the details, but it really seems like they could have easily done the game on SCD...well someone could have, maybe not NEC Avenue.

[ccovell]

The problem is that NEC Avenue does very straight, standard, uncreative conversions.  They also port graphics over from Capcom games without doing any colour rebalancing/brightening that would allow backgrounds to have many colours in them, even on the PCE.  It's like they just remap the 16-bit palette down to 9 bits in a paint program, and then call it a day.

[Mathius]

Didn't they do the Capcom Super Grafx games??? They turned out good right???

[ccovell]

The games play alright in most cases (*cough* AlteredBeast) but they do a lacklustre job with graphic tiles.  Take a look at a scene from arcade GnG and its SuperGrafx counterpart:



The tree has 11 colours in the arcade (I had a paint program count them for me), but the tree in the SGX has colours that can be counted with the eye alone.  5 colours.

With a little massaging of the palette, the full range can still be kept, even on the lowly SGX/PCE.

SGX GnG has half the number of colours as the arcade version, but it isn't the hardware's fault.  The same kind of sloppy conversion runs through the rest of GnG, 1941, Forgotten Worlds, etc.

Anyway, Strider ACD was developed by an outside company (Dice Creative), so NEC Avenue's failings possibly didn't enter into it anymore.

[esteban]

Anyway, Strider ACD was developed by an outside company (Dice Creative), so NEC Avenue's failings possibly didn't enter into it anymore.

Dice Creative? I believe they also developed Gotcha! The Sport! for NES.

[Mathius]

I see your point, Chris. Laziness I take it.

[Bonknuts]

Anyway, Strider ACD was developed by an outside company (Dice Creative), so NEC Avenue's failings possibly didn't enter into it anymore.

 YEah, but NEC Ave must have been their mentors