Graphics: Turbo vs. Genesis - ye old debate

[awack]

Ummmm... should Golden Axe really be on the Turbo list as a positive asset?  The thing looked worse than the Master System version of that game.  I don't think Ys 3 should be on that list, either.  It may look great in stills, but the second it moves you can see where the quality most certainly wasn't.  Oh, Strider should be on that list, either.  It looks like it has 1/2 to 1/4 the colors of the Genesis version and lack of parallax as well.  And Areo Blasters/Air Buster shouldn't be on that list, either.  Everything in the Turbo version looks smaller.  Snatcher is a bit subjective and I don't think either system has any advantage graphically in this game.  Rastan Saga 2 looked pretty much identical on both systems, except the Genesis looked more like the arcade since it had parallax.  I could go on and on.  Horrible list.

ummmm..if you read what i said

these are not all of them but most of the games from this large sample of ports and remakes

key word is most

for starters i don't agree that the turbo version of strider looks like it has only 1/2 to 1/4 the colors of the genesis version infact the screens i have seen the turbo version has almost double the colors but colors are not everything and i give this one to the genesis
Golden axe, the genesis version has better sprites, effects and animation but if you actually look at the backgrounds the duo version looks better in many cases, still the genesis takes this one easily,
Snatcher, this certainly looks better on the duo to me.
Parallax scrolling isn't the only difference in rastan saga 2, the duo version has better textures due to more colors and better detail.

[Keranu]

I'll take good old hand drawn stuff over technical trash any day.

[Michael Helgeson]

Damn

I agree with GUTS.  Lack of color aside, Soul Star did things that the Turbo, SNES or even the Neo Geo simply could never do.

Not good idea using the NeoGeo as a comparison. If thats the case then if the Sega Cd was such a scaling monster,then why didn't Samurai Shodown do it on SegaCd.I can name hundreds of things the Neo did that the Genesis couldn't do even with the Sega Cd add on anyway,and it should be noted that any attempt to port a Neo title over to Sega Cd or Genesis ended in horrible failure for the most part....where as at least the Snes was decent,and the Pc-Engine Arcade cd technology was awesome. The few,and I do mean few titles that used scaling on Sega Cd anyway did look well,but that was the exception,not the rule,and basically boiled down to the few shining moments of the hardware being used as well as it could. It def scaled sprites themselves well and objects,and the floor/ground graphics fluidly.

[Black Tiger]

I like the driving portions of Batman Returns as well (I always turn off the gross-looking platform parts which I feel display some of the worst Genesis graphics next to Chakan).  Batman & Robin requires you to get in a "zone" to pay it because otherwise it is too tough.  It is beatable, though.

Batman Returns looks as impressive to me as the few 32-bit games I remember using a similar style(Road Rash?) and Batman and Robin looks like a full on 3D texture mapped game.

Over on Sega-16 there's a debate over which was more impressive visually/technically: Virtua Racing Genesis or Star Fox. I think that Batman & Robin puts them both to shame.

for starters i don't agree that the turbo version of strider looks like it has only 1/2 to 1/4 the colors of the genesis version infact the screens i have seen the turbo version has almost double the colors but colors are not everything and i give this one to the genesis
Golden axe, the genesis version has better sprites, effects and animation but if you actually look at the backgrounds the duo version looks better in many cases, still the genesis takes this one easily,
Snatcher, this certainly looks better on the duo to me.
Parallax scrolling isn't the only difference in rastan saga 2, the duo version has better textures due to more colors.

What the PCE version of Strider has going for it is the use of actual graphics/artwork from the arcade and a ton of extra detail over the Genesis version. Unfortunately, they did a bad job translating those graphics to the PCE. But it'd still look nice enough if the scrolling wasn't broken.

Its still way better than its awful rep, but its still a bad port by PCE standards(especially by CPS to PCE standards).


OldTurboBastard: some Turbo/PCE games with decent layered bgs: Magical Chase, Gate of Thunder, Super Darius/Darius Plus, Ninja Spirit, Vasteel, Shubibinman 3.

[awack]

What the PCE version of Strider has going for it is the use of actual graphics/artwork from the arcade and a ton of extra detail over the Genesis version. Unfortunately, they did a bad job translating those graphics to the PCE. But it'd still look nice enough if the scrolling wasn't broken.

Its still way better than its awful rep, but its still a bad port by PCE standards(especially by CPS to PCE standards).

I agree with this, another thing that was bad about the pc engine version was the choice of colors in some places.

[Joe Redifer]

Michael, I didn't say that the Sega CD could eclipse anything the Neo Geo could do, I said that games like Soul Star have scaling that simply can NOT be done on the Neo Geo, period.  The Neo Geo cannot do perspective (like SNES mode 7) and it cannot do hardware rotation.  Therefore F-Zero and Pilotwings, some of the first SNES games ever, could not be done on the Neo Geo.  Also, Core or Malibu didn't make Samurai ShoDown for the Sega CD, some little podunk developer did.

Strider PCE looks extremely dark to me.  It looks... murky.

[Michael Helgeson]

JVC handled Sam Sho and Fatal Fury Special. Sammy handled Sengoku. None of them were good ports,which also held true for AOF,World Heroes 1,King of the Monsters,View Point,Samurai Shodown,and alot of others on Genesis.
It def had nothing to do with the lack of quality programmers,and more to do with what the hardware could do and not do.

Yea the Sega Cd had the ability to do scaling with perspective in the play field,and as I said did objects/sprites and the floor graphics well and smooth,but regardless of this the Neo did the whole damn screen along with traditional back and forth individual sprite scaling. Each used their scaling abilities to do what they could,and both have strong points,but neither were massive monsters besting each other scaling wise because of the apples and oranges comparason. The Neo could do this,the Sega Cd that. Each method was good for certain game types,with the Sega Cds being best for driving/flying games,the Neo's obviously being arcade titles.

 That and as far as just traditional graphics,sprites,colors,and audio goes,the NeoGeo is the winner hands down. The NeoGeo was a sprite handling monster. I will take that over the few shining moments of the Sega cd's hardware any day of the week.

[Joe Redifer]

Who wouldn't?  Anyway the Neo Geo had to be a sprite handling monster since I don't think the thing had any dedicated background planes... only sprites. 

[Black Tiger]

It is technically impressive that the Neo Geo did everything with only sprites and the results are impressive as visuals in general.

But even though the Genesis could port Neo Geo bgs as serperate layers and only have to do characters as sprites instead of doing things technically the same way...  -I look at layered Turbo/PCE bgs the same way. It doesn't matter how the effect is achieved, only that the end result looks cool.

[Joe Redifer]

I agree that it doesn't matter how the effect is achieved, but the Genesis could do that particular effect better.  Also it had Blast Processing©™® which r00lz u.   u cannot compeet wit teh blast procesing

Anyway I've always wondered about some TG/PCE games that did multi-scrolling quite well, like Ninja Spirit.  I'm not a programmer, but I have a theory that the "tiled" background is simply a single column of sprites, repeated across the screen.  When repeated like this, it acts as only one column instead of many, though they cannot be moved independently from each other.  Am I right?  Can I get a programmer's opinion on this?

[malducci]

 I looked at Ninja Spirit a while back and it animates the tiles to simulate the additional BG layer.

 Heh..guess Technosoft forgot to turn on Blast Processing©™® for TFIV 

[ccovell]

The Neo Geo cannot do perspective (like SNES mode 7)

The Neo-Geo can indeed do perspective (just not rotation) by changing the scaling of its BG [sprites] each scanline -- just like the SNES and GBA did it.  The title screen to Sengoku Denshou 2 does this in a limited fashion.  Probably the main thing limiting its use in things like driving games is the complete lack of rotation.

Yes, the Neo-Geo is a strange beast.  It has one background plane, used for title screens, displays, and the road in Riding Hero, and all the rest are sprites -- a whole friggin' lot of them.  That's like having a hundred background layers, so I consider that pretty powerful.

[Tatsujin]

some questions about the multilayer funktion of both systems, which isn't clear at all yet.

PCE: there's no such HW feature, therefore for any additional layers, a sprite-(plane) have to be used to fake parallax-scrolling. so tell me how many of those big-sized sprites where used to simulate back-layers in Winds of thunder or Coryoon? and how big in size are they? was it even possible to creat such big sprites? and how the horizont flickering could be suppressed that well since you have overlapping sprites along the whole screen?

MD: the MD got some extra back-layers in its HW, but how many of them? and when games exceeded the number of max. possible HW multilayers, does the MD use the same sprite trick as the PCE? (e.g. Thunder Force IV..)?

[Joe Redifer]

I can answer the Mega Drive question.  It only has 2 background layers.  You can achieve what looks like more than one pretty easily, though.  Just as long as a background never overlaps itself, all is fine.  Thunder Force 4 works basically by putting the backgrounds in between each other.  If you look closely, you'll see that layer A never overlaps itself, the same with layer B.  Also there are some games on the system that use sprites to give the illusion of a 3rd layer, like Shinobi 3, Sonic 3, Ys 3 or any game with a "3" in it.    I think both the PCE and MD can scroll a single background "into" itself vertically (but not over itself) as seen in Super Fantasy Zone and Aero Blasters.

Basically games like Winds/Lords of Thunder on the Turbo have predetermined scrolling.  You can't scroll in any direction freely with the parallax working in each of those directions like you can on, say, the overhead levels of Thunder Force 2.  If the "BG sprites" in a PCE game get heavy, then that will likely be a part in the game where the enemy attacks aren't too intense.

Also, the MD's resolution limit is 320 pixels wide.  It can do 448 pixels tall via interlacing as seen in Sonic 2.

[malducci]

some questions about the multilayer funktion of both systems, which isn't clear at all yet.

PCE: there's no such HW feature, therefore for any additional layers, a sprite-(plane) have to be used to fake parallax-scrolling. so tell me how many of those big-sized sprites where used to simulate back-layers in Winds of thunder or Coryoon? and how big in size are they? was it even possible to creat such big sprites? and how the horizont flickering could be suppressed that well since you have overlapping sprites along the whole screen?

MD: the MD got some extra back-layers in its HW, but how many of them? and when games exceeded the number of max. possible HW multilayers, does the MD use the same sprite trick as the PCE? (e.g. Thunder Force IV..)?

 Coryoon? You mean all those parallax scrolls? They don't *overlap* and are also known as hsync scrolls. The PCE, like the MD and SNES, can do up to 242 hsync scrolls in a single frame.

 For LOT, sprites are used in *some* areas, mostly the ones that need overlap, but the game also uses animated tiles to cut back on the sprite usage. GOT does this too. Usually small areas where the scroll "drops" off and/or transitions into another section leaving a gap.

 There are a lot of clever ways to fake multilayer scrolls. Just want until you see Charles MacDonald PCE project with MindRec. Some really impressive stuff.