SOTN on PC Engine

[Arkhan]

The difference being that SOTN continued the trend like tons of games did on PSX even though 3D was available.

Sprite based games were still normal on that machine.

Rebirth on the other hand, came from a time where 3D took over and 2D started to finally come back.

Hence the name rebirth.

It's definitely a throwback, or a retro game.  Pick whichever word.  It's just a really well done one.

[nopepper]

I don't think SOTN was deliberately trying to be a callback to old games. On the contrary, it meant to woo players with its fancy effects and pixel art. The graphics and music were as much of a selling point as the new Metroid-like approach to level design. It in no way meant to convey "old" within its design. Hell, I'm not sure Sony would have let it be published in the US if it was...

The whole Rebirth series' shtick, OTOH, is exactly to celebrate the old with new games.

BTW, I just started playing Gradius Rebirth and holy shit is the music awesome (and the game is pretty good as well). I went to look at who composed it and it was none other than Manabu Namiki, which did not surprise me at all, as I seem to enjoy everything he does.

[SignOfZeta]

To me SotN felt Retro because at that time getting anything on US PlayStation that was 2D was pretty rare, thanks to the a$$holes running the place at the time.

However it’s not like they had already gone 3D and went back to 2D. The previous game was Rondo, right? And SotN was a very clear evolution of that. The PCE game had stuff a FC couldn’t do, the PS game did stuff the PCE couldn’t do, seems less logical to me.

However, honestly, even when Rondo came out it felt pretty Retro with its wooden as hell controls. Post Sonic or whatever the game felt real old fashioned. Nobody else was locked to a staircase like that or getting juggled by frogmen. By 1993 it was all about speed and control in the more popular platformers.

So kinda both, IMHO.

Are Shin Shinobi Den and Psychic Assassin Taromaru Retro? They are from the same time period but different. Taromaru probably looks that way because the guys couldn’t figure out polygons but Sega obviously could and yet theirs is the lesser game of the three by a mile.

I think back in 1995 or whether there were still loads of guys in Japan still trying to make the perfect 16-bit game and were overjoyed to try it on a way bigger machine and that’s where this stuff comes from. That wouldn’t be Retro really, just stubborn/out of touch.

For it to be Retro it has to be done on purpose. “I’m making this game that pretends it’s old.” I don’t think SotN was that...but it was a little, let’s be honest.

[nopepper]

Developers at the time were going for anything that was "next gen", so anything fresh, cool and exciting was the philosophy. They knew that if it felt old, everyone would accuse their game of being 16bit-ish (as a derogatory term).

I think all 3 games you mention were trying to accomplish this, using different approaches. Shinobi went for digitized graphics and FMV cut scenes, Taromaru went for lots of polygonal backgrounds and SOTN went for an elegant mesh of PSX next gen hardware abilities. Out of those 3, I would say Taromaru is the only one that was perhaps deliberately old school, as it seems the one that is trying the less to impress. Heck, perhaps Shinobi as well, since Sega didn't seem to know what the hell they were doing back then. But I still feel like SOTN was meant to impress and not harken back to the old, other than it being mainly sprite based 2D.

Thankfully, as you stated, Konami was stubborn and perhaps confident enough in the power of the Castlevania franchise, to use it as a way to show the world that next gen didn't necessarily mean going 3D.

[SignOfZeta]

Well, they try 3D, it just sucks dogs balls.

 But I agree, the success of SotN is probably why we got so many good GBA CV games and why the series exists at all today. Lots of series/genres were dying at that time (the other two games I mentioned...) but this one lived.

[saturndual32]

Of course. Purely from a graphics point of view I think you could get decent results although you'd be looking at some rather harsher contrast. Looking at sprite sheets, the colour count isn't greatly out of the PCE's reach. But it's a fun experiment.

Indeed it is fun, which is why I still plan on porting it someday to the Super Grafx Arcade CD-ROM2 System, because the world needs an "SGXACD"!    (Although I'm working on Mega Man X for straight PCE first as a learning experience.   )

I like the way you think... but at what point do you get to port the Arcade Contras to the PCE?

[SignOfZeta]

Who’s brave enough to make a tate only release?

[Michirin9801]

And to the peeps who are porting Shovel Knight to NES, the question is, why the NES?!? Is it just because of a bigger audience and it's Nintendo? Because that game would fit a million times better on the PCE, with its "fake" parallax and all.

I don't think there's anyone porting Shovel Knight to the NES, it's just that I hear a lot of people saying stuff like: "I wanna see this game on the real NES" or something like that...

Oh and, you'd probably need at least a Saturn in order to do a perfect port of Shovel Knight, and even that one wouldn't be in wide-screen... And it's not because of the assets or animations, those could probably work fine on the PC engine, except for maybe some of the bigger sprites which are still a little too smoothly animated, no, it's because of the layers upon layers of overlapping Parallax Scrolling in every single stage, and of the 8 channel soundtrack not counting sound effects (which could just be on CD or maybe be re-arranged on the PCE's PSG which would probably sound even better anyway)
There are also a ton of little effects too, particularly in the text, that would easily take up too many sprites in order to reproduce...

[SignOfZeta]

You would have zero trouble funding a NES port of Shovel Knight, THEREFORE it could be easily done.

It might look like Double Dragon 2600 but...

[Michirin9801]

It might look like Double Dragon 2600 but...

Either that, or you put the entire hardware inside of the cartridge and have the NES provide only the power and the input, and thus making you have to have a cable sticking out from your cartridge and connecting it to the TV, therefore completely defeating the purpose of "porting" it to the NES...

[BigusSchmuck]

To me SotN felt Retro because at that time getting anything on US PlayStation that was 2D was pretty rare, thanks to the a$$holes running the place at the time.

However it’s not like they had already gone 3D and went back to 2D. The previous game was Rondo, right? And SotN was a very clear evolution of that. The PCE game had stuff a FC couldn’t do, the PS game did stuff the PCE couldn’t do, seems less logical to me.

However, honestly, even when Rondo came out it felt pretty Retro with its wooden as hell controls. Post Sonic or whatever the game felt real old fashioned. Nobody else was locked to a staircase like that or getting juggled by frogmen. By 1993 it was all about speed and control in the more popular platformers.

So kinda both, IMHO.

Are Shin Shinobi Den and Psychic Assassin Taromaru Retro? They are from the same time period but different. Taromaru probably looks that way because the guys couldn’t figure out polygons but Sega obviously could and yet theirs is the lesser game of the three by a mile.

I think back in 1995 or whether there were still loads of guys in Japan still trying to make the perfect 16-bit game and were overjoyed to try it on a way bigger machine and that’s where this stuff comes from. That wouldn’t be Retro really, just stubborn/out of touch.

For it to be Retro it has to be done on purpose. “I’m making this game that pretends it’s old.” I don’t think SotN was that...but it was a little, let’s be honest.

I agree. To some of us who remember the 90s for the Playstation, it was all about pushing those damn polygons. 1997 was no different.

The reflecty water stuff in Bloodlines kicks ass.

I'd like to see Simon's Quest for PCE with some slight tweaks to make it less annoying.   

If you fix the text a little, tweak the heart-grinding, and maybe add some more action to the mansions, it would be great.

like, add bosses instead of just stabbing bowling balls with sticks to finish the mansion.

And make it so you can't f*ckING DIE IN THE TOWNS IF YOU FALL IN THE WATER.

That was pretty stupid of them.

I would take it a step further, fix the f*cking endings, put in some Super Castlevania whip moves, fix the broken Engrish and you would have a decent Metroidvania game.

[Black Tiger]

Here's some of the SotN inspired stuff that's in Henshin Engine.

Only the extra background details of the building in the courtyard was cut, in order to allow dual layer parallax (and that brazier flame was a temp for mockups). Every section of the Castlevampire stage has "dual layer" style parallax, including the boss room.

The simplified and more tiled look was intentional to try to use as few (16 x 16 pixel) tiles as possible, because of the restrictions of HuC, not the limitations of PC Engine hardware.



Henshin Engine                 Symphony of the Night












The drawbridge itself is styled after the one in SotN.

[SignOfZeta]

Cooooooooool.

[Arkhan]

beaaaaaanssssssssssssssss

[Zero_Gamer]

BT that really is impressive work. It's gorgeous.