Highest on-screen colors screenshot

[akamichi]

Anyone know how the genesis actually got around the color limitation?  (software tricks, but how does it fool the hardware?)

Don't know for sure, but probably some kind of palette modifications during h-blank.  Seems to be a common technique to display more colors than usual per frame.

I believe Ex-Ranza (Ranger X?) used this trick to get 128 or so colors on screen in game.  However, don't quote me on that since I've never seen the game in action.  I just read about it in a book I have.

[Tatsujin]

btw. did someone check out some of the highest on-screen colors for SFC & NG AES games? how much do they bring on the scales?

[ccovell]

The SFC will of course win with colours going into the thousands.  Transparencies and colour blending multiply the on-screen colour amounts pretty quickly.

[Tatsujin]

yeah..thousands..but i'm not interested in the possibilities, i want to know the facts how much the best games used?

a garou on the NG and a garou on the PCE doesn't look that much different in terms of colours on-screen, altough the NG can display thousends of them as well, the PCE can't.

[Keranu]

I believe Ex-Ranza (Ranger X?) used this trick to get 128 or so colors on screen in game.  However, don't quote me on that since I've never seen the game in action.  I just read about it in a book I have.

I've messed with the color counts in Ranger X before briefly and remember counting around 40 or so. I don't know what book you read that says it can get 128, but color wise the game is a bit messy overall.

[Joe Redifer]

I've seen nothing from Ranger-X that looks above average color-wise.  Vectorman 1 sports about 70 colors on screen for nearly the entire game... during gameplay.  Although the NeoGeo AES can supposedly put 4096 colors onscreen at once, I don't think I've ever seen more than a couple hundred from the machine.

[Black Tiger]

The SFC will of course win with colours going into the thousands.  Transparencies and colour blending multiply the on-screen colour amounts pretty quickly.

Which is cool from a technical standpoint.

But they still look like 100+ color games with a simple transparency on top and not like graphics using thousands of colors for shading.

[Keranu]

Although the NeoGeo AES can supposedly put 4096 colors onscreen at once, I don't think I've ever seen more than a couple hundred from the machine.

Man you have serious beef with the Neo Geo, shame on you . Anyways, though I have color counted many Neo Geo games, the highest I've seen was over 500 in KoF'98.

[Joe Redifer]

Pffft...  even the wimpy Saturn can do that.  It's just a wiener.  The Game Lord says the Neo Geo is a real hot dog!

[SuperDeadite]

What do you use to count color's anyway?  I'd love to experiment myself.  As for NeoGeo games, I have no clue on how many colors are being displayed, but Blazing Star looks quite bright and purdy.   

[_joshuaTurbo]

has anyone tried that one scene in Lords of thunder, when you beat all the normal levels and that one screen pops up connecting all the islands?  It goes incredibly bright and looks really amazing.  Anyway, has anyone looked at that shot?  To me it looks like a ton of colours, much nicer than most SNES and Genny games!

I hope you guys know what shot I'm talking about...lol   

[GUTS]

Yeah I bet Blazing Star puts tons of colors on screen, that game has some of the most amazing 2D graphics of all time.

[Black Tiger]

has anyone tried that one scene in Lords of thunder, when you beat all the normal levels and that one screen pops up connecting all the islands?  It goes incredibly bright and looks really amazing.  Anyway, has anyone looked at that shot?  To me it looks like a ton of colours, much nicer than most SNES and Genny games!

I hope you guys know what shot I'm talking about...lol   

I don't think that it has any more colors than the regular map screen.

They probably just color cycled it to the equivalent of being inverted in photoshop like this-

[akamichi]

I believe Ex-Ranza (Ranger X?) used this trick to get 128 or so colors on screen in game.  However, don't quote me on that since I've never seen the game in action.  I just read about it in a book I have.

I've messed with the color counts in Ranger X before briefly and remember counting around 40 or so. I don't know what book you read that says it can get 128, but color wise the game is a bit messy overall.

Well, I looked thru the book again and basically it stated that this game could do up to 128 colors.  Couldn't find much info on the book online (for the 5 minutes I tried looking ), but here's a here's a link to the book called MegaDrive Encyclopedia.  It basically lists all JPN games released (MD, CD, 32X) by date, with a small blurb about the game.  It also has some interviews from some old school MD game developers.

[ccovell]

Welp, I guess awack beat my find. 125 is the new record.

It's not an official game, but TML tried valiantly to beat Toy Story's record of 160+...

   
   129 colours    ....................................   156 colours

Give the Turbo a shadow & highlight mode in hardware, and I'd be able to beat it!