What games push the system?

[Joe Redifer]

Sp aside from Gate of Thunder, Winds of Thunder and Sapphire, what are some games push the technical limits of the system?

Do NOT mention any TurboGrafx games at all in this thread, PC Engine only! Mention of TurboGrafx games in the PC Engine forum is illegal. If you want to talk about the TurboGrafx-16, go to the TurboGrafx subforum. It has absolutely no business EVER being discussed here, and vice-versa! We have different forums for a reason (what that reason is, I do not know nor can I comprehend but whatever, you guys want it that way).

EDIT: Oh yeah not Dracula X, either!

[wildfruit]

Maybe populous? I mean not on a visual impact level but with not much RAM there's a lot going on. I'm just guessing.

[Necromancer]

Magical Chase - lots of graphical tricks not used often elsewhere
Gulliver Boy - impressive FMV, much better than Sherlock or ICFtD
Spriggan - awesome looking regular CD game that beats many Super CD shewties in the graphics department
Champions Forever Boxing - pushes the sound samples like a mo-fo
Falcon - they look pretty bleh, but they're real polygons!
Gunboat - ditto
Faceball - ditto, though these look decent
Vasteel - lots of weird warping and transparency effects

[wildfruit]

Maybe populous? I mean not on a visual impact level but with not much RAM there's a lot going on. I'm just guessing.

Populous even had some extra work RAM built in, didn't it?

And that reminds me: Strip Fighter II... in 8 megabits it pulled off visuals comparable to Street Figher II and its 20 megabits.

I have a vague recollection of a thread discussing the issue. I think the conclusion was that it didn't. But then again there must be some reason the card is thicker.

[Necromancer]

Populous huey does have extra work ram.

[owlnonymous]

Do NOT mention any TurboGrafx games at all in this thread, PC Engine only! Mention of TurboGrafx games in the PC Engine forum is illegal. If you want to talk about the TurboGrafx-16, go to the TurboGrafx subforum. It has absolutely no business EVER being discussed here, and vice-versa! We have different forums for a reason (what that reason is, I do not know nor can I comprehend but whatever, you guys want it that way).

[Joe Redifer]

LOL!

[SuperDeadite]

Not sure how much it pushes the system, but Metamor Jupiter's rotating colony stage always makes me drool.  The game does some large scaling effects at times though they are quite slow.

[Sadler]

I'm not sure if these games pushed the system to its limits, but they do have neato scan line effects:

Metamor Jupiter
Vasteel 2
Street Fighter 2
Nexzr
Super Darius II
Neutopia 2
Star Parodier
Cotton
Solider Blade

And I'd like to call out Star Parodier again for having some of the best presentation on the system. The parallax, scaling, distortion, music, sound effects, intro, charm, everything. Just completely awesome!

EDIT I mean, I'm a graphics whore, so I'm just going to rattle off some more games that look amazing:

Anearth Fantasy Stories
Terraforming
PC Denjin
Legend of Xanadu 2
Coryoon
New Adventure Island
EDIT3 HOLY NO THAT WAS TOTALLY TG16 and I still think the 3D wireframe stuff in Space Invaders is cool...

EDIT2 Does homebrew stuff count? Tongueman's Logic had some neat stuff going on. The transparency Link demo was cool, as was the Axelay demo.

[HailingTheThings]

Do NOT mention any TurboGrafx games at all in this thread, PC Engine only! Mention of TurboGrafx games in the PC Engine forum is illegal. If you want to talk about the TurboGrafx-16, go to the TurboGrafx subforum. It has absolutely no business EVER being discussed here, and vice-versa! We have different forums for a reason (what that reason is, I do not know nor can I comprehend but whatever, you guys want it that way).

That's racist! lol

[imparanoic]

soldier blade, street fighter 2 and pc denjin are probably the technically impressive hucards

Nezxr and image fight 2 is very impressive from a technically point of view and showed that the pc engine cd rom is as impressive as their sega and Nintendo counterpart

[A Black Falcon]

Most of the games I'd mention have been mentioned already -- Street Fighter II', Legend of Xanadu II, Nexzr, AnEarth Fantasy Stories, Spriggan...

Beyond that, hmm.  For regular CD titles, what about Alzadick or Download 2?  They look pretty good for games that don't use the Super CD.  Also I personally really like W-Ring, both in visuals (for a HuCard) and particularly the music.  And on that note, how about Gradius II (Super CD)?  I see Super Darius 2 mentioned here, but Gradius 2 looks just about as good I think... as for Gradius 1, it obviously can't match the sequel, but for a HuCard game it looks great, slowdown aside.

Otherwise, hmm.  Well, the best-looking RPGs are probably Xanadu II and AnEarth, but Magicoal and Monster Maker look a LOT better than most any earlier Turbo RPG.  Great work there compared to the earlier stuff.

[Arkhan]

Does Atlantean count?

There's a f*ckton of sprite pushing, even though most of it is for visuals.

and Insanity!

There's more onscreen collisions in Insanity than there are in your average hectic level of any PCE shooter.


That's kind of sad when you really think about it.

[Joe Redifer]

Does Atlantean count?

Well it would, but not for the episode I'm trying to put together. I've already talked about Lords and Gate of Thunder multiple times as well as Sapphire and Dracula X. Those are all great system pushers on a technical or at least visual and movement level. I looked at Nexzr and it looked boring. Just another shooter set in space scrolling up. It had stretchy ships that appeared out of nowhere and that was the only redeeming feature I found. I've gotta have more than just a boring black background full of stars.

[imparanoic]

you never know nexzr could play better than m.u.s.h.a, probably not as it's just plain difficult and frustrating to play

Pc genjin3/Bonk 3: Bonk's Big Adventure is technically impressive due to the super large sprite, which snes or genesis rarely has such large sprites