I give up. The Genesis is true 16Bit and the PCE is a 16Bit imposter.

[Otaking]

this all irrelevant, what really matters is revealed if you take the music from R-TYPE III stage 1, then overlay it backwards with the Streets of Rage 2, stage 3 soundtrack, Yuzo Koshiro has encoded a hidden message:
"The PC Engine and Super Famicom are 4 Bit, that's 2 bits each. I love my 12 inches of black 16 bit plastic, to be this gay takes AGES"

What if you play it UPSIDE DOWN!

A tiny robot Yuzo Koshiro jumps out the cartridge slot of the Megadrive/Genesis and sets fire to any other games consoles in the house.

[Black Tiger]

The effect is clever. But the root of the effect has been used in some PCE games before (shadowing). Why this effect was only used to this level in all of the PCE's life, is beyond me. It's a pretty simple effect; you reserve a chunk of subpalettes (cause the PCE has plenty to spare), then apply the different subpalettes to the tilemap in whatever way you want. In the case of the ship, it's a circle with a few fade off rings. IIRC the game uses six 16color subpalettes for that area. Well, that's how many are reserved for the effect. It might not use all six of them, haven't looked at it in a while. But yeah, simple as that. The effect can be taken to much better high extremes, but no game does. Pitty.

Isn't this basically a shaded version of what games do when there is a spotlight in absolute darkness, I'm thinking Ys SMS (and Turbo) and Dragon Warrior, where the tiles surrounding the lit area are just replaced with solid black ones (or really the inverse)?

If that effect was using as many as 6 subpalettes, then it's yet another effect that utilizes the strength of the PCE. Considering that the Genesis only has 4 palettes of color to go round for tiles and the SNES 8. Not that it couldn't be done on either effectively, but perhaps not as perfect in such a detailed game.

[Vecanti]

this all irrelevant, what really matters is revealed if you take the music from R-TYPE III stage 1, then overlay it backwards with the Streets of Rage 2, stage 3 soundtrack, Yuzo Koshiro has encoded a hidden message:
"The PC Engine and Super Famicom are 4 Bit, that's 2 bits each. I love my 12 inches of black 16 bit plastic, to be this gay takes AGES"

What if you play it UPSIDE DOWN!

You get 69 bit.

[sunteam_paul]

Wasn't there some clever spotlight effect in Schbibin Man 3 somewhere?

Also, I would have love to have heard what Yuzo Koshiro would have done with the PC Engine sound chip.


EDIT: Ah yes, here it is.






I'd be interested to know how this was acheived as the sprite layer looks like this:

[nodtveidt]

That might have been another priority trick there... would be fun to put together some test code to experiment.

[Otaking]

does anyone know why the Japanese Mega Drive had 1 more bit than the US Genesis?
I always found it bizarre that it was a actually a 17 bit machine yet it had 16 bit written on the front.

[spenoza]

hmm..wears the saturns trancparency?

The Saturn could do hardware transparency, but due to bugs in the implementation, it only seems to work without weird visual artifacts on 2D elements. Most of the rare examples of *true 3D transparency are somewhat trickery-driven (Burning Rangers). The hardware didn't have support for light sources, either, but they could be implemented in software and worked well (Burning Rangers, NiGHTS, Shining Force III).

**correcting myself as I learn more**

[nodtveidt]

does anyone know why the Japanese Mega Drive had 1 more bit than the US Genesis?
I always found it bizarre that it was a actually a 17 bit machine yet it had 16 bit written on the front.

<knowsenoughtobedangerousmode>
Well duh, it's because bits are even or odd, and the ROM is arranged into even and odd sides. So, 16 is even, but then there's the odd too! So you have to add 1 more bit to make it odd. It's just that they can't count since the Jaguar's math confused them!
</knowsenoughtobedangerousmode>

[Black Tiger]

Wasn't there some clever spotlight effect in Schbibin Man 3 somewhere?

Also, I would have love to have heard what Yuzo Koshiro would have done with the PC Engine sound chip.


EDIT: Ah yes, here it is




I'd be interested to know how this was acheived as the sprite layer looks like this:

I think that might be using the PCE's single color third layer. I don't fully understand it's implementation, but if it was drawn in that negative pattern and given higher priority than the spotlight sprite, that could be how it's done.

[Bonknuts]

Wasn't there some clever spotlight effect in Schbibin Man 3 somewhere?

Also, I would have love to have heard what Yuzo Koshiro would have done with the PC Engine sound chip.


EDIT: Ah yes, here it is




I'd be interested to know how this was acheived as the sprite layer looks like this:

I think that might be using the PCE's single color third layer. I don't fully understand it's implementation, but if it was drawn in that negative pattern and given higher priority than the spotlight sprite, that could be how it's done.

 Sprite is set to priority behind the background layer. The parts that show gleaming edged light, are the sprite showing through instead of BG color #0 pixels. Normally you'd think the BG color #0 would be the large flat spots in such tiles, but instead they chose to use the pixel area that would appear to 'gleam' when light hit it. It's not the Jackie Chan effect, but it's clever still. Another game to add to the list of non flickering transparency based/type effects.

[SignOfZeta]

So...its a matte, basically?

That looks really cool. Does anyone have a save state for Magic Engine so I can see this with only a lazy man's level of effort? I don't have this game.

[Bonknuts]

Also, I would have love to have heard what Yuzo Koshiro would have done with the PC Engine sound chip.

 Ehh, maybe. I rather hear what Tim Follin could have done

[Arkhan]

Also, I would have love to have heard what Yuzo Koshiro would have done with the PC Engine sound chip.

 Ehh, maybe. I rather hear what Tim Follin could have done

Hopefully something good to make me stop hating him for dicking up Ghouls and Ghosts so bad on the Amiga.

That dude rocked the NES hard

[Black Tiger]

Also, I would have love to have heard what Yuzo Koshiro would have done with the PC Engine sound chip.

Here is something similar to Streets of Rage performed by a real actual PC Engine-

http://www.youtube.com/user/Bonknuts#p/u/21/YCbS25gTIY8

[Lilgrafx]

You're stupid, ceti.  The Genesis is clearly a 24 bit machine (16 bit 68000 + 8 bit Z80 = 24 bits of MEGA POWER!), just like the Neo Geo.

Whoa man the genesis is clearly a 64 bits 24+ 32 for 32x + 10 for cd - 2 for being sega = 64