Are Sapphire's Graphics overrated?

[Bardoly]

I pretty much agree with Mat here.  It's a really neat shoot-'em-up that I like to pull out and play 2-player and let my Playstation friends see what this system was capable of.  They really say, "Wow!  That's impressive!"  Is it the best PC Engine shoot-'em-up?  That's hard to say, but it is one of my favorites for sure.

[esteban]

Great thread.



I love discussions like this.

[SamIAm]

You need to understand the difference between technical achievement and artistic acumen. Sapphire does things Gate of Thunder never could but Gate of Thunder is more cohesive. In GoT, all the graphics look like they were drawn in the same time period by the same people and it plays way better. Many PCE shooters are better than Sapphire overall, as a game, but Sapphire goes to extremes in more lavish ways, mainly in the number of animation frames it stores in the AC. The time traveling theme works as much for it as against it artistically. Gameplay wise is pretty B- in my humble opinion.

Well said. I agree completely.

[spenoza]

Sapphire is clearly a technical marvel that highlights just how much graphical splendor the PCE is capable of when probably fed with data. I think of the PC Engine with Arcade card similarly to how I feel about the Neo Geo: throw enough RAM/ROM at the problem and it can handle almost anything. That said, I think Sapphire really doesn't have as impressive an artistic style as many other PCE shooters, and despite being fantastically animated, many of the enemies and bosses are actually rather ugly. The game is also mechanically rather bland. It's competently designed and programmed, but the only reason it stands out is the animation. Without those crazy amounts of animation the game would simply be pretty good and then promptly get forgotten in the sheer mass of great shooters on the platform.

[geise]

For it's time the graphics are quite good considering a lot were pre-rendered. Modeling was still in it's early forms then. Add to the fact it was for sprites on a 16-bit system with a limited but decent color palette, I felt they were pretty good.