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[01011001]

When I was a kid I thought Super Turrican was the greatest thing I'd ever seen lol

well the Turrican games always used almost all the bells and whistles of the platform they released on.

 

[Godfavor]

The absolute limit pusher imo is Doom, yeah I know it used superFX2 but it wasnt made with doom engine rather than a custom one so it would be able to run on the SNES. Not only that but the SNES version of Doom had most levels and all bosses despite the cartridge limitations. SNES can also do true semi invisible weapons as you grab the invisibility sphere power up. The map also used mode 7 for scaling and rotation unlike the other versions. Oh and kick ass music on top of that! Truly a miracle

 

[CamHostage]

Could you share some examples?

Smoothing out SHMUPS is a big case. There's a long-awaited hack for Gradius III (those bubbles!), there's one for Axelay (when the rocks used to slow it down) and R-Type and Contra 3 (which never needed full-speed IMO as the slowdown of the bomb or big bosses was part of the fun, but it does improve some things unexpectedly well, like the double-gun spin in the top-down levels.)

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=snes+Original+x+sa-1

The most impressive one might be Race Drivin', which is so staggeringly different that it almost seems like a totally different game on totally different hardware.

 

[electricmastro]

Framerate could be smoother on Stunt Race FX, but I think it runs satisfyingly enough:

 

[SpongebobSquaredance]

Great art direction, great enemy designs (especially some of the bosses), very detailed sprites, very detailed in general, great use of parallax scrolling

 

[phil_t98]

this always amazed me back in the day the way the terrain moved up and down. yeah the frame rate wasn't amazing but it looked so good back then

 

[ZoolNL]

Yeah, even though the first game is arguably the most famous one, 2000 still got ported around quite a bit:

I thought I knew almost all of the Vita games?! I’m not sure if this is correct haha

 

[electricmastro]

I thought I knew almost all of the Vita games?! I’m not sure if this is correct haha

Nope, SimCity 2000 really is on Vita. There's even a feature that actually lets you drive around in cities:

 

[ZoolNL]

Nope, SimCity 2000 really is on Vita. There's even a feature that actually lets you drive around in cities:

Wow!!

 

[electricmastro]

Wow!!

Now granted, it's through PS1 compatibility on Vita, but a port nonetheless.

 

[I Love Rock 'n' Roll]

Smoothing out SHMUPS is a big case. There's a long-awaited hack for Gradius III (those bubbles!), there's one for Axelay (when the rocks used to slow it down) and R-Type and Contra 3 (which never needed full-speed IMO as the slowdown of the bomb or big bosses was part of the fun, but it does improve some things unexpectedly well, like the double-gun spin in the top-down levels.)

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=snes+Original+x+sa-1

The most impressive one might be Race Drivin', which is so staggeringly different that it almost seems like a totally different game on totally different hardware.

I would have played that shit for years if it came with SA-1 back in the days! That's fucking crazy...

 

[SirTerry-T]

This is the game that demonstrates the best the strengths of the raw console (not with a 21 MHz proc added in the cart lol) in my opinion.

It uses very well the color palette for subtle gradients, which is only possible when you have a lot of colors available.
It displays a lot of colors on screen, and uses some technique for the sky to up the number and make, again, subtle gradients.
Some good effects with water, for example.
Music is also very good despite the memory limitation of the console.
Sprites are big and well animated. Not many things at once on screen, which helps the console and its limited proc to keep gameplay smooth.
You can hardly do better, in my opinion. It is a showcase for the console (as well as its sequels).


This one uses a 21 MHz additional proc. At this level, this is like putting half of a 32 bits console in the cartridge... Great game nonetheless.

It's also a showcase for Alias PowerAnimator, the software Rare used at the time for all their CG.
PowerAnimator had a great Colour Quantizer tool as part of its software suite which did a brilliant job of reducing colour palettes used in Rare's pre-rendered sprites.

It's not just the SNES that did the heavy lifting on those games.

 

[lostinblue]

I mean, SF:A2 has no right being on the SNES....it was literally asking the SNES for all it had.....

Star Ocean as well.

The chip those games had was a compression one, due to cartidge adressing size and cost limits; other than that they use vanilla hardware, and pummel it they do.

The most impressive one might be Race Drivin', which is so staggeringly different that it almost seems like a totally different game on totally different hardware.

Looks like software rendered vs with acceleration.

Game doesn't look very good in either version though, even if it runs a lot better.

 

[lostinblue]

This one uses a 21 MHz additional proc. At this level, this is like putting half of a 32 bits console in the cartridge... Great game nonetheless.

Well, to be fair Yoshi Island could have been adapted to run without the Super FX for the most part. it was used for sprite scaling and rotation, but you could always replace that with asset streaming (what Donkey Kong country did, by pre-rendering those "pixels and rotations", dizzy yoshi probably couldn't happen and the 3D objects would have to be animated in 2D.

thing that would be hardest to re-create would be the bosses.

 

[cireza]

Well, to be fair Yoshi Island could have been adapted to run without the Super FX for the most part. it was used for sprite scaling and rotation, but you could always replace that with asset streaming (what Donkey Kong country did, by pre-rendering those "pixels and rotations", dizzy yoshi probably couldn't happen and the 3D objects would have to be animated in 2D.

thing that would be hardest to re-create would be the bosses.

Replacing this with asset streaming would probably be difficult (would the bandwith be wide enough ? and this would give a lot of work for the CPU), and I think that would need a lot of specific visuals, which would lead to an even bigger ROM.

But I agree, you can always find a solution and achieve good results if you get a bit creative.

 

[Chiggs]

The absolute limit pusher imo is Doom, yeah I know it used superFX2 but it wasnt made with doom engine rather than a custom one so it would be able to run on the SNES. Not only that but the SNES version of Doom had most levels and all bosses despite the cartridge limitations. SNES can also do true semi invisible weapons as you grab the invisibility sphere power up. The map also used mode 7 for scaling and rotation unlike the other versions. Oh and kick ass music on top of that! Truly a miracle

Yes, a real miracle when you basically throw a new console onto a cartridge. OMG SNES!!! HOW DO YOU DO THESE MAGICAL THINGS?!

 

[StreetsofBeige]

I find it amazing that SNES churned out such good looking and sounding games considering how slow the cpu is. Even more amazing when I googled it, it was made by Ricoh. I thought all they did was photocopier stuff.

The CPU is a Ricoh 5A22, which is a derivative of the 16-bit WDC 65C816 microprocessor. In NTSC regions, its nominal clock speed is 3.58 MHz but the CPU will slow down to either 2.68 MHz or 1.79 MHz when accessing some slower peripherals.

 

[Godfavor]

Yes, a real miracle when you basically throw a new console onto a cartridge. OMG SNES!!! HOW DO YOU DO THESE MAGICAL THINGS?!

Doom would not be able to run even with super fx 2, they made a custom engine just to reach a 2 digit frame rate, this was the first and only time that ever happened to doom revision. Also it was still in a snes cartridge which had more levels and bosses unlike some 32x versions (Atari Jaguar) which have way more processing power and storage. It also had a transparency layer in weapons that some 32 bit systems lack

 

[UnNamed]

SNES CPU is a mistery to me, because from what I know about the 5A22, it runs at 21.477 Mhz, but it has bottleneck in registers and memory areas, so it takes 6 to 12 clock per instruction based on the type of the operation (21.477Mhz/6 /8 /12 ->3.58/2.68/1.79, but it can overrun these problems using chips in the cartridges. Using DSP1, SA1, SFX, SFX2 at different speeds, SNES should match its native clock speed. For example, SFX2 run at 21.4Mhz, so the op/cycle with the SNES CPU is 1:1.

I'm not totally sure, though.

 

[cireza]

The CPU is a Ricoh 5A22, which is a derivative of the 16-bit WDC 65C816 microprocessor. In NTSC regions, its nominal clock speed is 3.58 MHz but the CPU will slow down to either 2.68 MHz or 1.79 MHz when accessing some slower peripherals.

It was a very weak CPU honestly.

Also it was still in a snes cartridge which had more levels and bosses unlike some 32x versions (Atari Jaguar) which have way more processing power and storage.

Doom on 32X had a limited ROM cartridge. It could have embedded more levels, and it has been massively improved by the community in recent years. And still runs on a legit 4 Meg cartridge. It was a rushed port to launch with the console.

The SNES effort was impressive. A patch was released recently that allowed for circle-strafing on SNES (which was impossible in the original game).

 

[lostinblue]

Replacing this with asset streaming would probably be difficult (would the bandwith be wide enough ? and this would give a lot of work for the CPU), and I think that would need a lot of specific visuals, which would lead to an even bigger ROM.

But I agree, you can always find a solution and achieve good results if you get a bit creative.

Certainly bigger ROM. But Yoshi island was actually not the biggest ROM for it's time. 16 Mbits cartridge is 2 MB.

Donkey Kong Country one year before was 32Mbits/4 MB. Some games managed to be bigger with bank switching, but memory was clearly very expensive.

I'm sure if instead of rotate/scale sprites for animation they had to animate them the classic way rom size would be bigger but could sidestep the superFX chip in some areas at least.

fun fact, but if I remmber correctly they actually used superFX RAM for game RAM storing assets and the like, which was unusual but a clear measure to increase available ram.

3D games used it for framebuffer instead, but I'm not 100% able to explain. info is out there though.

It was a very weak CPU honestly.


Doom on 32X had a limited ROM cartridge. It could have embedded more levels, and it has been massively improved by the community in recent years. And still runs on a legit 4 Meg cartridge. It was a rushed port to launch with the console.

The SNES effort was impressive. A patch was released recently that allowed for circle-strafing on SNES (which was impossible in the original game).

The programmer later went on to do Bleem for the Dreamcast and recently released the doom snes source code:

-> https://www.pcgamer.com/source-code-for-the-snes-version-of-doom-has-been-released/

There's a small community discussing updates to the game now, adding texture compression and enabling the 4 MB rom size instead of 2MB. Ah, and save ROM as well.

With more rom memory they think they can improve framerate a little too.

 

[Trunx81]

Just wanted to add that I love these kind of threads. How programmers squeezed everything out of this great console of my childhood and how even today geniuses still try to improve. Amazes me every time.

 

[electricmastro]

Just wanted to add that I love these kind of threads. How programmers squeezed everything out of this great console of my childhood and how even today geniuses still try to improve. Amazes me every time.

Racing was prob the genre devs were compelled to be cutting edge in the most:

 

[93xfan]

I’m one of those SNES limit pushers that does the impossible. I beat all of the special levels in Super Mario World and got a hand crafted message from the team saying that I’m a “super player”.

Really, it happened.

I also saved all of Hyrule and even the Golden Land.

Then I shut up Cranky Kong in DKC2 by getting the top spot.

Was there a question you wanted to ask me, OP?