Graphics: Turbo vs. Genesis - ye old debate

[OldTurboBastard]

the pcengine has lots of games with good parallax, you just haven't played any of them 

Not true - played most of 'em mentioned on here, aside from a possible few oscure japanese titles.

FACT -most games for the turbo do not use overlapping parallax scrolling. They are not the the norm, they are the exception. Most games that did have it featured separately scrolling planes that could not overlap. When they did manage to pull it off overlapping parallax, it was generally clunky looking, (i.e. black squares instead of sharp borders) and one layer of the background was normally a weak pattern (Ninja Spirit). Y's III had two complex backgrounds but it ran like doo-doo. Some of the parallax on the turbo may have been good (LOT, Dracula, Dead Moon etc), but it was no where near on the level of say Mystic Defender Or Revenge of Shinobi (both early games for the Genesis), and it was RARE (which is why we turbo fan boys seem to ga-ga over it), which made owning the turbografx in the USA back it 1990 like having a system that pretty much did not do true parallax, only the separate planes like we see in R-TYPE that do not overlap.

it is what it is...

[Michael Helgeson]

In the case of Altered Beast, it was because there was no parallax to port. As I stated in another thread, the parallax was added specifically for the Genesis version. The Turbo version was not a port of the Genesis version, it was a port of the arcade. The arcade did not have any parallax.

You and I both pointed this out,I wonder how that keeps getting missed so much....
Also,as stated before and what also seems to be forgotten,the Genesis used off the shelf parts,and was easier for companies to program for,esp for companies in there to make  a quick buck with the bonus of less programming experience needed then what early development on the Pc-Engine required. Companies programming for the Pc-Engine had to start from scratch,and learn tricks and limits. Yea they did on the Genesis also,but to a lesser degree as the hardware in there was familiar to about all the companies about due to Amiga and arcade development.


Edit:ccovell pointed much of the above out too,sorry I overlooked that post,but still always good to know all great minds think mostly alike.

[Turbo D]

the pcengine has lots of games with good parallax, you just haven't played any of them 

Not true - played most of 'em mentioned on here, aside from a possible few oscure japanese titles.

FACT -most games for the turbo do not use overlapping parallax scrolling. They are not the the norm, they are the exception. Most games that did have it featured separately scrolling planes that could not overlap. When they did manage to pull it off overlapping parallax, it was generally clunky looking, (i.e. black squares instead of sharp borders) and one layer of the background was normally a weak pattern (Ninja Spirit). Y's III had two complex backgrounds but it ran like doo-doo. Some of the parallax on the turbo may have been good (LOT, Dracula, Dead Moon etc), but it was no where near on the level of say Mystic Defender Or Revenge of Shinobi (both early games for the Genesis), and it was RARE (which is why we turbo fan boys seem to ga-ga over it), which made owning the turbografx in the USA back it 1990 like having a system that pretty much did not do true parallax, only the separate planes like we see in R-TYPE that do not overlap.

it is what it is...

Have you played airzonk? that game has tons of parallax and huge bosses and plays very nice and fast. I'd like to see the Genesis do something like that. Shinobi was fine and all, but it had poor color and fuzzy/blurry sprites. Perhaps the Genesis needed parallax so badly to cover up its bland color and fuzzy/blurry grafx. One thing the Turbo Grafx had over the Genesis was sharp picture and non-blurry/ugly sprites. Its hard to tell what the faces of the characters are on a lot of genesis games because of the poor quality, haha. Sometimes its even hard to tell whats going on.

[GUTS]

Air Zonk is definitely nice looking but Shinobi III, Ranger X, and many others completely annihilate it graphically.

[Joe Redifer]

This thread is pretty pathetic from both sides.

And to add to it's uselessness, I will inform you that Air Zonk had h-sync parallax (no overlapping), just like Choplifter for the Sega Master System.

[Michael Helgeson]

I'd also like to add that the Genesis is clear and sharp in RGB,S-video,and component,not blurry or fuzzy.

[awack]

With all the talk about parallax scrolling i should mention shape shifter (a turbo game for those who don't know), there is an area which has an object in the foreground which scrolls by so often behind that you have i think 4 or 5 layers of scrolling (the ground your running on) and behind that you have 3 layers of overlapping parallax scrolling(trees).

Thats not the same thing as having 2 background screens but it is still very impressive to most people i guess.

[Joe Redifer]

It would be impressive to me.  I haven't played Shape Shifter because I really only hear bad things about it, but my friend owns it so I should borrow the game and give it a try.

[Tatsujin]

so let's merge that parallax talk in short sentences! as told by chris and joe:

As for the PCE:
non-overlapping parallax > h-sync
overlapping parallax > sprites (from the 2nd to n layers)

As for the MD:
two hardware layers. so from the 3rd to n layer >
non-overlapping parallax > h-sync
overlapping parallax > sprites

right?

[malducci]

As for too much attention being paid to parallax, I disagree, it's a pretty big upgrade over flat boring backgrounds and is even used in some genesis games to create gigantic boss characters without using up onscreen sprites. I'd say it's right up there with the mode 7 effects on the SNES as far as importance goes.

 You hit the nail on the head. Parallax can be faked in many different ways (and some you guys have yet to see...) and game design around such subtle scrolling layers can prove to be more in the interest of overall production than importance of throwing in a second layer *just* to be "16bit" distinguished. But... a *big* added bonus to second or more BG layers is that you can fake large Boss (sprites) with it. Maaaaanny games do this. Heh- using sprites to fake BGs, using BGs to fake sprites.

 Ehem... SGX.  (Wish the hell they had included the damn hardware into the Duo unit since the technology(ICs) were already developed and available)

 Btw, Cdoty mentioned NeoGeo specs on a mame dev site and stated the system could support 16x4096 size sprites. Wiki says 16x512, but they've been known not to have their shit together.

[Black Tiger]

But regardless, I don't understand how you can point out how impressive Lords of Thunder is for layered graphics in one sentence and in the next sentence say that Altered Beast and Strider prove that the PC Engine can't do them.

Then why did'nt they port over parrallax in those games? Probably because the system can't handle having to emulate true parallax while providing the rest of the game action. It works well in LOT and other turbo original games bacause because they could program around the limitation using fairly simple second layers, which often morph back into one layer when the system could not pull off the mirage any more.

...if they could've they would've is all i'm saying. And yes maybe "they couldve if they used nifty programming and this and that" but the fact is they did'nt because it was not easy for the turbo to pull off

Because not every game is developed by the same team.

Pretty much all the parallax in the Genesis Altered Beast is very easy to pull of on the Turbo. It'd just be 'slate' scrolling that even the with a few extra sprites to poke out over the layers in spots. Its nothing that puts the Genesis's layering abilities to good use.

Here is the Genesis Altered Beast parallax on NES-




It has nothing to do with ease or difficulty for the Turbo, only competency and/or laziness of developers.

It'd take some nifty tricks to do some of Strider's bgs on the Turbo, but its not hard to figure out how at least some of it could be done. But its obvious that the PCE port of Strider was very poor and that the developer couldn't handle programming in some of the most basic things, like scrolling a screen across a flat background, let alone attempt to do layers of any kind.

I'd also like to add that the Genesis is clear and sharp in RGB,S-video,and component,not blurry or fuzzy.

Yeah, but who in North America was playing their Genesis in RGB and S-Video in 1989? And would those who did really say that Genesis games had smoother edges and more detailed sprites when they could make out all the jaggies and pixels?

[malducci]

so let's merge that parallax talk in short sentences! as told by chris and joe:

As for the PCE:
non-overlapping parallax > h-sync
overlapping parallax > sprites (from the 2nd to n layers)

As for the MD:
two hardware layers. so from the 3rd to n layer >
non-overlapping parallax > h-sync
overlapping parallax > sprites

right?

Wait.. what?  By ">" do you mean "->"  as in "goes to/associated with"?

 The MD can do overlapping parallax layers without using sprites. ThunderForce 4 ocean side level is a perfect example of this. The SGX and SNES can do this too.


 Black Tiger: The NES did that with the help of an additional chip (in the US they used MMC3 or greater), otherwise you could only split the screen once per frame using the sprite 0 method (The coin in the upper side screen of SMB1 is a perfect example).

[Black Tiger]

so let's merge that parallax talk in short sentences! as told by chris and joe:

As for the PCE:
non-overlapping parallax > h-sync
overlapping parallax > sprites (from the 2nd to n layers)

As for the MD:
two hardware layers. so from the 3rd to n layer >
non-overlapping parallax > h-sync
overlapping parallax > sprites

right?

Wait.. what?  By ">" do you mean "->"  as in "goes to/associated with"?

 The MD can do overlapping parallax layers without using sprites. ThunderForce 4 ocean side level is a perfect example of this. The SGX and SNES can do this too.


 Black Tiger: The NES did that with the help of an additional chip (in the US they used MMC3 or greater), otherwise you could only split the screen once per frame using the sprite 0 method (The coin in the upper side screen of SMB1 is a perfect example).

The NES used chips for a lot of things. So then its a 'trick' that even the SMS can do no problem.

With all the talk about parallax scrolling i should mention shape shifter (a turbo game for those who don't know), there is an area which has an object in the foreground which scrolls by so often behind that you have i think 4 or 5 layers of scrolling (the ground your running on) and behind that you have 3 layers of overlapping parallax scrolling(trees).

Thats not the same thing as having 2 background screens but it is still very impressive to most people i guess.

It appears to use a 'weak pattern' tile animation in the distance and the 'h-sync' parallax on the ground with sprites popping out.

Whats cool about the animating tiles is that, if I remember correctly, they animate as if there are two layers in the distance overlapping each other, kinda like 3 layers of bgs.

You hit the nail on the head. Parallax can be faked in many different ways (and some you guys have yet to see...) and game design around such subtle scrolling layers can prove to be more in the interest of overall production than importance of throwing in a second layer *just* to be "16bit" distinguished. But... a *big* added bonus to second or more BG layers is that you can fake large Boss (sprites) with it. Maaaaanny games do this. Heh- using sprites to fake BGs, using BGs to fake sprites.

The NES has many games with very cool giant bosses that do that on a black background.

I played a ways through Atomic Robo Kid the other day, and some of the fullscreen bosses had slight flicker at times. I'm guessing that they just used a bg layer on the Genesis version, but it was still impressive that the PCE was tossing them around with only sprites plus they looked cool regardless.

[awack]

Whats cool about the animating tiles is that, if I remember correctly, they animate as if there are two layers in the distance overlapping each other, kinda like 3 layers of bgs.

exactly, there are 3 overlapping background layers of trees.

[Turbo D]

The Genesis had 3 years on the PcEngine and was twice its size and the games don't look any better. The genesis would be an utter waste of chips with out that extra background layer;  its all that it has to compete. Anyways, Genesis failed to the PcEngine in Japan for obvious reasons. It will fail in this thread as well