The problem with SuperGrafx games in general is that none of them take advantage of the hardware. I can't think of anything on the SuperGrafx that couldn't be done just as well on the "regular" Turbo/PCE. Less flicker, yeah, maybe, but who creates an entire new console to eliminate flicker?
It sounds like you think the only thing the SGX adds is a few extra sprites. Most of the SGX games have double-layered backgrounds which would be *impossible* to reproduce in a general sense on the regular PC-Engine. Sure, sprites can be used to simulate objects appearing behind a single background, but you cannot get two full-screen planes moving around on a PCE like the SGX does.
So the technicalities behind the two methods are different.
"Impossible to reproduce?" I don't think so. Unless you talking specifically from a coding standpoint. I won't pretend to know anything about coding video games, and I'm sure having seperate background planes is much easier to work with from that position as opposed to trying to simulate the effect using sprites and whatnot. But to the end user, ME, what's the difference? It all looks the same to the player and is only different on a technical level.
Think Gate of Thunder, Lords of Thunder, Air Zonk, Aeroblasters, Coryoon, Psychosis (stage 1, 2, 5), New Adventure Island (many stages), Ninja Spirit, R-Type (stage 5), Darius, Shockman 3, etc, the list goes on and on. Point being, there are tons of games on the "regular" Turbo that have multiple layers of scenery that scroll at their own speed.
The technical details of what goes on behind the scenes and how these effects are created is not important.
My point was that, of the handful of SGX games that
were released, I don't believe any of them did anything that couldn't be done on the regular Turbo. This is not to say the SGX is not capable of doing wonderful things-- the game library available simply doesn't.
ADDITIONAL: After re-reading my comments in my previous message, I can see how perhaps the perception is that I was speaking of the SGX hardware itself. In fact, I was speaking only about the
existing game "library". I'm interested to hear what portions of the existing SGX games you think couldn't be replicated on a regular Turbo. And I'm not interested in technical mumbo jumbo-- like I said before, how the effects are generated in each case is not the issue. It's the end result that the player sees that matters. Whether one console uses a "real" background layer or simulates one in software is not important to me.
FWIW, I think Sapphire is a lot more impressive visually than anything released on the SuperGrafx.
