R-Type

[nat]

I thought IREM themselves did the HuCard version and the CD version since the game runs in the higher resolution that IREM games tend to have and that Hudson games never seem to have.

Me too, to be honest. I don't have the HuCard handy to check, but I'll take Paul's word that Hudson is credited. Maybe Hudson had no part in the CD version at all. And maybe Hudson's role in the HuCard version was minor to begin with. Perhaps Irem really DID do the port themselves, but Hudson just released/published it. This would actually make sense. If you notice, when you boot the cart, you go straight to the title screen. When you boot the CD version, you first get the "Irem" logo splash screen before anything else. This screen is present on all the Irem games I've played on the TG except the R-Type cart.

I wanted to ask about that high resolution, actually. Is Irem the only company that utilized it? As mentioned, it seems most all Irem games use it. Why didn't more games use it? Were there restrictions it imposed that using the "normal" resolution didn't? Were you still able to use as many colors on screen at the higher resolution?

[malducci]

I wanted to ask about that high resolution, actually. Is Irem the only company that utilized it? As mentioned, it seems most all Irem games use it. Why didn't more games use it? Were there restrictions it imposed that using the "normal" resolution didn't? Were you still able to use as many colors on screen at the higher resolution?

There are a number of games that use it. There no difference in number of colors and palettes for any of the resolution, but dithering tends to work better with higher res. The res mode your refering to is medium resolution mode 352(376max) x 224/240 - high resolution mode is 512(536max) x 224/240 and low resolution mode is 256(288max) x 224/240. When running in mid res mode, you number of graphic tiles to build the display increases as well as the tile map - in other words 64k of vram now fits less than with low res mode. But the biggest draw back by far is that the sprites per scanline line limit does not increase with the increase in horizontal resolution - unlike the genesis. This basically means that there is more of a chance for flicker.

The good number of games that use it and some switch between low and mid resolution modes - Monster Maker goes into mid res mode for the battle scenes. I've seen game cinemas do this also.

[sunteam_paul]

I thought IREM themselves did the HuCard version and the CD version since the game runs in the higher resolution that IREM games tend to have and that Hudson games never seem to have.

Me too, to be honest. I don't have the HuCard handy to check, but I'll take Paul's word that Hudson is credited. Maybe Hudson had no part in the CD version at all. And maybe Hudson's role in the HuCard version was minor to begin with. Perhaps Irem really DID do the port themselves, but Hudson just released/published it. This would actually make sense. If you notice, when you boot the cart, you go straight to the title screen. When you boot the CD version, you first get the "Irem" logo splash screen before anything else. This screen is present on all the Irem games I've played on the TG except the R-Type cart.

Maybe you're right. It could be that Irem wasn't going to jump in and distribute their stuff right away so let Hudson do the work. Although there is one thing that I'm unsure of - all Irem games have the same style of sound on the PC Engine, it's pretty distinctive (very tinkly, I don't like it much). However R-Type sounds completely different and much better. Maybe it was a co-production?

[Black Tiger]

I wanted to ask about that high resolution, actually. Is Irem the only company that utilized it? As mentioned, it seems most all Irem games use it. Why didn't more games use it? Were there restrictions it imposed that using the "normal" resolution didn't? Were you still able to use as many colors on screen at the higher resolution?

There are a number of games that use it. There no difference in number of colors and palettes for any of the resolution, but dithering tends to work better with higher res. The res mode your refering to is medium resolution mode 352(376max) x 224/240 - high resolution mode is 512(536max) x 224/240 and low resolution mode is 256(288max) x 224/240. When running in mid res mode, you number of graphic tiles to build the display increases as well as the tile map - in other words 64k of vram now fits less than with low res mode. But the biggest draw back by far is that the sprites per scanline line limit does not increase with the increase in horizontal resolution - unlike the genesis. This basically means that there is more of a chance for flicker.

The good number of games that use it and some switch between low and mid resolution modes - Monster Maker goes into mid res mode for the battle scenes. I've seen game cinemas do this also.

I believe that Shadow Of The Beast jumps between all 3 resolutions during it's intro.