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

[Tatsujin]

Metamor Jupitor is a pretty crazy tech demo.

That is for certain!

[Black Tiger]

This video has that 4 layer parallax with transparency for a bit at the beginning (see the previous part for multi-directional scrolling). But at 4:59 it does full screen Mode 7 mosaic.



Pretty good for fake 16-bit.

[Arkhan]

That mode 7 mosaic is pretty ho-hum.  It almost looks like they accidentally just made it do that. 

Its still neat, but eh, not that impressive. 

The rest is.

[SignOfZeta]

This video has that 4 layer parallax with transparency for a bit at the beginning (see the previous part for multi-directional scrolling). But at 4:59 it does full screen Mode 7 mosaic.

Pretty good for fake 16-bit.

Unfortunately the end result is incredibly un-incredible.

[Joe Redifer]

Is Mode 7 required to make the SNES do mosaic?  The "mosaic" in Metamor Jupiter (more just just straight blockiness as mosaic actually is a de-resed version of something already existing) looks pretty bad.  The real mosaic in New Adventure Island is much better (and a true mosaic), but mosaic still sucks on any system.  There is only one effective use for it, and that is when you get shocked  Then it looks good and is a well-chosen effect.

Speaking of Mode 7 and how each scanline is just scaled differently than the scanline below it to make it a perspective, why didn't they ever include walls?  Granted, this would be tough to do if something were to rotate, but, say, if you were just going forward, couldn't you have a road and a "wall" or building or something at the end of that road which also scaled as you get closer?  I never saw a SNES game do that.    The "tilt" of Mode 7 must have been part of the devkit software, there is no way it had to be done manually.  And I'm sure the software treated it as a tilt as far as the graphic designer was concerned.

[Tatsujin]

IIRC the SFC mode-7 coud do only one playfield at time, walls would then have required more than one playfield.

[Vecanti]

This video has that 4 layer parallax with transparency for a bit at the beginning (see the previous part for multi-directional scrolling)

Here's a link to some of that

And here's one of the spinning backround/tunnel parts

Oh yeah and supports up to 3 player at once.  Any 3 player shmups on the Genesis or SNES?

[Joe Redifer]

IIRC the SFC mode-7 coud do only one playfield at time, walls would then have required more than one playfield.

I doubt it, I think it could be done with a single playfield.  Let's say the bottom half of the screen has each scanline scaled at a different percent to give the appearance of a tilted road.  Every scanline above the top half of the screen would have the same scaling percentage so it would have the appearance of a non-tilted wall.  I don't see why something like that couldn't be done, just as long as it doesn't try to rotate (which it still could, it would just look odd as hell).

[Tatsujin]

Maybe it could be done, but only limited to straight forward move. Seems to get very complicated as soon curves are involved.

[Bonknuts]

IIRC the SFC mode-7 coud do only one playfield at time, walls would then have required more than one playfield.

I doubt it, I think it could be done with a single playfield.  Let's say the bottom half of the screen has each scanline scaled at a different percent to give the appearance of a tilted road.  Every scanline above the top half of the screen would have the same scaling percentage so it would have the appearance of a non-tilted wall.  I don't see why something like that couldn't be done, just as long as it doesn't try to rotate (which it still could, it would just look odd as hell).

 Yup, you got it exactly. You really need to break in the dev or demo scene. Or least FX design wise. The only down side to mode 7, is that you only have a total of 256 tiles. I believe you can set up mirror flip options (per sub map, not per tile) for the ABCD tilemap layout, so that might help a bit. I've said it before and I'll say it again, SNES really was under vram'd. Not just mode 7, but mode 7 really could have used more vram. PCE and MD has 64k, SGX had 128k. All came out before the SFC. SFC should have had at least 128k of vram.

[shubibiman]

The SNES just sounds like everything is underwater.

That's so true. That's why I hate the SNES sound chip. When I hear explosions in shmups, it sounds like a baby shitting suddenly in his diaper.

[Tatsujin]

it sounds like a baby shitting suddenly in his diaper.

But which can be really noisy!

[sunteam_paul]

I think the issue with the SNES sound chip is that it's the audio equivalent of the uncanny valley.

[_joshuaTurbo]

  - Super Adventure Island

I don't get the SNES sound chip hate.

[sunteam_paul]

  - Super Adventure Island

I don't get the SNES sound chip hate.

That's an example of great use of the SNES sound chip, most games don't sound like that. I don't deny that technically it's the most advanced of the generation, but I'd much rather have heard console sound develop more like the arcade sound chips of the day (Konami, Sega) than where Nintendo took it, which was a bridge between CD and cheap synth for the most part.

I like computery sounding sound. I still love C64 music more than 99% of the orchestral scores in games these days.