Games that Push Hardware Limits 8
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- Опубліковано 21 лис 2024
- Episode
331- Time to take a look at some more games that do somewhat exceptional things given the platforms that they're running on.
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What's a game that you think pushes hardware limits, and in what way?
Pong
Doom on Texas instruments calculator. Obviously because it's a calculator.
I thought Hyrule Warriors for the 3DS was really impressive since it was able to run at a constant 30 FPS especially with the amount of enemies on screen although I only played it on the New 3DS models.
Gran Turismo 4.
The Atari 2600 deserves a shout out. It was designed as a Pong/Combat dedicated hardware. It only has two monochrome sprites and 128 bytes of RAM.
Space Invaders shouldn't be possible, much less games like Battlezone, Solaris, and Kung Fu Master.
Winter Games IS an FMV game - the trick it's pulling off is essentially pre-storing the 2D vector frames inside the ROM, and using the SuperFX to draw them.
This technically means the SuperFX is still acting as a vector graphics processor - just not in the way you'd typically think about it.
This's the same trick other games such as the Another World series use.
By the way, look up the "Spaceballs - State of the Art" demo for the Amiga if you want to see more of the dancing woman - same trick. I'm pretty sure it's the same woman - and the same vector frames, too.
@@flygonbreloom was just going to comment that! - 'damn those winter games devs are definately fans of State Of The Art'
@@flygonbreloom Not surprising given that State of the Art (and its "sequel" 9 Fingers) and Winter Gold share a programmer!
Fun fact: The Tobal games and the first two Tekkens were all directed by Seiichi Ishii, the lead designer for the original Virtua Fighter.
He wasn't very creative on different moves huh
@@orkestriusmusic839 Hey, if it ain't broke.
@@orkestriusmusic839 Tobal, Tekken and Virtua Fighter all play very differently, and are the foundation of all 3D fighters to this day.
Fun fact: We're all gonna die.
Winter Gold has demoscene coders all over it... I looked it up one of the coders (Paul Endresen) was in the Amiga Demoscene group Spaceballs, makes total sense
This is the first time I've seen footage of that game, I had to rewind to make sure he said Super Nintendo. I would've lost my mind if I saw it back in the day.
Yes, the greasy demoscene fingerprints were all over it, the dancing girl a dead giveaway.
Yes, Funcom in the early days recruited heavily among Norwegian demo scene talent! Was a crazy cool environment at that place back then 😊
It's funny to think that it took a Super FX 2 chip to get a SNES to do something that Commodore's hardware from 1985 could manage! I'm guessing the dancing silhouette effects used a planar graphics mode that consoles just didn't have, although I don't know for sure how it was done.
@@Banderpop I'm definitely not at LoneStarr's level, but I think I recall that the central piece of code that was the basis for Spaceballs "State of The Art" and "9 Fingers" demos, and then "Winter Gold" was a vector/polygonal based compression algorithm for the animation/"video". So he could compress a lot of frames of animation into a small size. In order for this to work, the vector calculations had to be fast enough to render it at a high framerate, which the 68000 CPU at ~7MHz in the Amiga could do, but the 5A22 at ~3MHz in the SNES would be too slow to do. Enter the SuperFX chip which accellerated the vector rendering.
A good friend of mine worked as a graphics artist on this game :)
Final Game Sack of the year!
Thank you for all the videos in 2021, Joe!
Hear hear! 👏👏👏
Morning coffee ☑️
Game sack video ☑️
Thank you Joe, for always starting off my Sundays with an awesome video! You’re the man!
Thank you Joe for all you've provided to us for Game Sack. Hope you have a great Christmas along with Dave. 🎄
I'm always absolutely blown away by how far understand of these older systems has come. Every Game Sack is like a lesson in resolution and specs - it's genuinely extremely interesting
Yeah. It’s fascinating. Music works the same way. I fall in deep holes watching UA-cam documentaries on disposable songs from my past. I watched a whole hour and a half documentary on Papa Roach’s Rise and Fall. It was riveting. I hated their song as a teenager but the documentary made me fall in love with them and what they were trying to do.
The character designs in Tobal were designed by Akira Toriyama. famed writer of Dragon Ball and who also illustrated the Dragon Quest series and Chrono Trigger.
I like how the robot character in Tobal has a shutdown button. and there's a special move where you can activate it, automatically making you lose the match.
Its really impressive that you can look at Tobal's flat-shaded polygonal characters and still identify them as being Toriyama's designs.
If I remember correctly, I think fighting vipers ran at a lower resolution in order to get that lighting effects and shading that VF 2 didnt have.
correct
@@meganchoi9097 i owned both, and tbh.. I think if I had to choose between the two.. I'd take the higher res of VF2 over the lower res but better lighting/shading of FV and FF megamix.
Yes, I was surprised GameSack claimed it was the same engine and resolution as VF2. Vipers and Megamix clearly are lower res but with added lighting, shading, and the 3D objects.
Game Sack before bed, a nightly routine for me.
The Tobal games look good they make me think PS1/Saturn games should have just not bothered with texture mapping for the most part. They've aged so much better
Yeah. And it’s not just that they “aged” a lot of late gen ps1 Games were so overly textured to compete with the n64 and Dreamcast that they liked like butt from day 1. We knew it THEN. Rally Cross always sticks out in my mind. The textures warped so bad it was almost nauseating.
Yeah! Also, PS1 and saturn games didn't have texture filtering or perspective correct textures anyway. Their texturing looked like ass in general. The increase in frame rate or resolution from leaving games untextured was frequently worth it.
untextured 3D games. this would be a great episode
@William Burns Super Mario 64 used a smoothed out, per-vertex lighting model. Flat shading is like what's seen in Virtua Fighter or Starfox. The N64 was able to create the appearance or rounded surfaces. I believe the shading technique it mostly used was called Blinn-Phong. The PSOne mostly used a simpler technique called Goraud shading.
Loving the vids man, been here before Dave and I’m still here after. kind of miss the dude you guys had good chemistry and always bounced off of each other really well. We will miss Dave, but long live Game Sack!!!10 more years!!!!!
There was a "before Dave"???
The Kawasaki game uses the exact same game engine that Vroom used on the Atari ST and Amiga
I do like my Sunday morning coffee with a side of sack.
A game that I think needs more attention is Star Wars Episode 1: Battle for Naboo on the N64. Factor 5 really pushed themselves with the game, and it runs in a default 480i mode when you play with the expansion pak. But the big thing that I found impressive is that you can unlock developer audio commentary with a cheat code, and it's available on nearly every level. They compressed a whole bunch of audio commentary for a console that wasn't known for its audio storage abilities.
If ever you decide to make big compilation videos about limit-pushing games, I'd say it'd be interesting to do them by console.
"Games that Push the NES's Limits" "Games that Push the Genesis's Limits" etc
In winter in Norway the sun actually never really rises Joe. That's why it has those colors ;)
Thank you for all your hard work entertaining us this year. One of the most consistent channels on UA-cam and we all appreciate you for it! 😉👍
LOVED Fighting Vipers!
Fighter's Megamix is the best 3D fighting game on Saturn.
Never knew I needed to try Last Bronx!
Even if it's more of the same, it'll be a nice blast from the past for this old man.
Yeah, Last Bronx was a blast, but I think I agree that Fighter's Megamix was the best fighter on the Saturn. :-) Tons of fun memories with that one.
This is why this series rules. Winter Gold is one of those games I would never think about twice or even bother to try out, but there’s a lot more interesting to it than initially meets the eye. Really impressive stuff for SNES hardware. I’d never know if it weren’t for this video.
As a long time viewer, with over ten minutes dedicated to viewing this channel, I cannot recall any Wolfenstein on Super Nintendo content.
Finally! Someone who sees the SNES port of Wolfenstein 3D for the technical marvel it is. It's modified version of the game engine would be reused on the ports for the Macintosh, Jaguar and 3DO.
The genesis can do it to with no extra hardware
@@gumpyflyale2542 Coulda woulda shoulda, but never officially did.
@@stonecodfish2365 This is why you don't see multi-directional sprites on those other platforms, despite them being capable of showing them.
The fighting games on the Saturn really are mind blowing to me, those backgrounds really impress me. I didn’t even realise that they are just scaled 2D layers until I saw a video on how it works! They look so 3D.
Merry Christmas Joe!! Thanks for another year of gaming goodness!! 💪💪💪💪💪
AMOK is a seriously underrated again on the Sega Saturn. It also has one of my favourite videogame OSTs of all time. I think my copy of the game actually spent more time in my CD player than in the SS.
Here here!
Love the smell of a new Sack in the morning.
Tekken 3 really stood out as the biggest improvement for pushing things graphically to the max.
So much power in Zany golf that I'm afraid to know how much Mega Power is in it!
Amok was one of the last games I rented in the late 90s for my Saturn, it's amazing!
Never played AMOK, but the soundtrack is sick af. Early Jesper Kyd at his best.
@@kosmosyche Will have to give it another listen, as I was more mesmerized by the voxels :)
Also that Viirtua Fighter 2 music on the Saturn is just outstanding! Man I miss my Saturn...
Ranger X is one of my favorite Genesis games. You really need to play it with a 6 button though so you can control the vehicle independently from your mech.
I've been binge watching some of your old videos and oh boy you guys go way back, ill be waiting for more videos, love the content and keep up the good work game sack
Some heavy hitters in this episode, you've covered like, a quarter of my childhood.
god that intro is so iconic to me everytime i rewatch your videos.. for some unknown reason i rewatch your videos after a year or so..
Good to see some props for Ranger X, it's become one of my favorite Genesis games.
Tobal 2 was considered outrageous for what it was doing on the PS1. Crazy that Square never bothered to translate it when they went through the trouble of bringing over stuff like Bushido Blade 2, SaGa Frontier 2, Dew Prism, Vagrant Story, etc.
Your vids come out on a sunday morning in my country, thank you so much always keeping my Sundays boredom free!
Last Bronx actually did not use the VF2 engine, it was AM3's original engine. They were super adamant about it and a bunch of interviews they did. Why do I have all this useless stupid information in my brain?
Hey Joe, great episode... Made me miss some of these game, and got my nostalgia to kick in😎
Winter Gold looks like FMV because in a way it is. Those are not 3D polygons but 2D shapes used to rotoscope a video. Basically every frame is a picture made by 2D polygons, no Z-axis!
I figured as much. The SuperFX 2 is probably being used to just fill in the vector data quickly and/or to aid with data decompression. Just a wild guess.
You brought me back to my childhood with the hidden game in motor tune. Thanks so much I had completely forgot that it was there.
I think it’s probably pronounced like “things have run amok”.
I'm waiting for that mother's Day special episode of games that Moms approve of.
Peggle and Peggle 2!?
puzzle bobble
Believe me, you don't want to know what games your mom approves of!
@@SpikeSlania, pegging and pegging x2, from what I've heard.
My own mother likes to play Borderlands and GTA V.
Games that do things I didn't expect?
Now any game I put in that doesn't require a day one patch is amazing.
I remember God of War 1+2 on the ps2 was probably some of the best looking games on the system. really pushed hard on the graphics, Dipping Framerates and screen tearing a plenty lol
Merry Christmas Joe 🎅
Perfect Dark N64. Not sure if you have done that but dang, it still holds up as one of the better FPSs, not in presentation, but execution.
I would say Treasure of the Rudras on the Snes pushes the limits in the battle scenes the enemies sprites have movement animations also when they attack you they they do an attack animation I blew me away when I first realized that they had movement and attack animations, the bosses are the real standouts.
I legit started headbanging when I heard the Map theme from Guardian War. Thank you for briefly warming my heart with the first JRPG I ever played.
21:42 Oh, trust me. the internet remembers Honey the Cat. they certainly remember her a lot better than Akira and the funky bunch outside of old FGC heads and people who play Yakuza/AM2 games. that's just the power of having an incredibly obscure cameo in a Sonic game.
Best way to start my Sunday… once every 2 weeks 😉
Fun and interesting video and I love this particular topic. Back in the '90s, I didn't particularly like flat, shaded polygons. Now, I appreciate them. In the case of Tobal 1, I remember thinking it was a mixed bag when it was new. The characters look nice and I recall having that opinion back then, but the environments did not look as nice to me So Tobal 2 is quite a significant upgrade with the environment texture mapping they used. The end result looks more complete. Both Tobal games look great in motion too, so seeing screenshots in magazines and online, back when video was rare, didn't show off what the games fully offered.
I recently played a good bit of Ranger X again. It's such a cool game with tons of detail and clever ideas. It's also very well planned as it's just using many of the normal features of the Genesis like the line scrolling, two background planes, and the shadow & highlight mode. All were used to great effect. The 3D effect from the line scrolling wasn't a common thing to see and it was very clever how they made it all work and look so convincing. It's a great game for the system both in presentation and gameplay, though it takes some getting used to at first. And here's a tip for anyone that reads this and is unaware: the mech can jump. Hold down before pressing up to get a lot more height before using the booster. You'll have more boosting range and it's necessary for the skyscraper stage on the harder difficulties without the floating platforms.
cool tip
Didn’t Gran Turismo have a “HiFi” mode for 60fps? Thought it was a neat inclusion.
And Ridge Racer Type 4 came with a bonus disc called Ridge Racer Turbo which was the original at 60fps
I believe it was replay mode only with no music. But still cool nonetheless.
@@GimpyDingo It was time-trial only for 3 tracks with reduced background details, but still looked very nice
Hi Joe, great video as always and nice to see more Saturn love.
However, yeah Fighting Vipers didn’t use the same high resolution as VF2, they lowered it to compensate for the extra polygons the destructible armour required, and they added coloured lighting and shading.
Still, an impressive game back in the day, one I played the hell out of. Going back to it now, I’m not a fan and much prefer VF2 and Last Bronx.
Amok was superb! Dark, yes, but the 3d space is incredible and the action never stops. I love the different techniques people used to get these effects and visions happening!!
naughty dogs programming was freaken incredible, i cant remember if it was andy or jason that said during e3 96 that even miyamoto was looking at it and was impressed. i admit mario 64 was the better game, but crash had facial expressions in 96
Doom 3 and Half Life 2 on the original Xbox always seemed kind of unreal to imagine appearing when it was first released.
Yeah. The original Xbox's CPU was still Pentium 3 at its core, and 64MB was a measly amount of RAM when compared to 2001 computers. The Doom 3 and Half Life 2 ports are miracles
Love this series. Merry Christmas Game Sack!
Kawasaki Superbike Challenge seems to be running on the exact same engine powering Vroom, a French Atari ST/Amiga car racing game (that actually started on the Sinclair QL as "Wroom!") that Domark had aquired and based their their F1 series on. None of these machines has of course any polygonal capability but who needs that when you have blast proc .. er .. I mean a MC68K CPU?
Wolfenstein does use Mode 7, it's used to upscale a smaller render area to fit the whole screen. This makes the screen look very low-res.
SNES!!! That is AMAZING!! That is moving QUICK and clear COLORS plus the Audio, That shows just how much MORE these Good ole systems can Honestly do.
I've never seen Tobal before, love the way the characters react to getting hit very authentic.
It’s PHENOMENAL. It plays very differently than other fighting games and was from the era where “fighting game” hadn’t been defined so rigidly yet. At one point my brother and i( who are perpetually on the same skill level) were having such a furious battle that it looked like the punch/block scenes from DragonBall. When it was over and neither of us scored a hit we were like, “ we will never do anything that cool ever again.
Check out Fighters Impact (PS1). You might like this one too.
Channels That Push Awesomeness Limits - Game Sack
No Joe, thank YOU for keeping me sane in these grotesque times!
The beard works for you, Joe. You look like some kind of Norse oarsman who for some reason found himself in the year 2021 and loos very confused about the whole thing.
Hey i'm old enough to appreciate the delicacy of playing @ 15 fps and 360p... cyberpunk 2077 looks super @ those settings...
This was cool to watch, heck yeah.
Didn’t know about Winter Gold and Ranger X , they look amazing on their respective consoles!
Amazing episode!
I was hoping you'd mention the 2-player mode in AMOK, though. No other 3D shooter on the system had one, so the fact that somehow AMOK has both co-op and versus 2-player modes is fantastic.
Until now, with HellSlave
Another game that I think is very impressive, on legacy hardware, is SHINOBI, on the Genesis. The new port by Typhoon (I believe his name is), I'm just basing it on the incomplete demon that I've played, but it seems to look, sound, and play very closely to the arcade original. If that came out from Sega, in 1989, it would have blown my mind! I can only hope that he can finish it some day. I'd still love to play it on the Genesis (or Mega Sg) some day.
That was such a bad ass opener. I had no idea that it was achieved purely in software. That's insane.
I bought Zany Golf for around 3 bucks and had a lot of fun with it.
my favorite series... Goated channel in general.
For real, the first like, 3 crash games kind of mixed together in my mind, i had all three and i never knew witch version i would be playing as a nine year old
Yessss. Have an upvote just for mentioning Ranger-X. Everyone I've introduced it to falls in love with it.
I'm impressed by Joe's knowledge of motorcycle manufacturers
this channel makes me feel the most cozy :)
You got to check out the open world game Mizzurna Falls for the ps1. Not released in North America but there's 2 English patches out. That is the most impressive game I've ever played. I'd say the most impressive thing about it was how every AI has a daily routine they do throughout the game. Everything plays out in real (game) time.
Love these episodes. I miss the days when it was a little more clear what the limitations of consoles were. Then watching developers go past them.
How was Green Dog not a part of this episode? Other than the obvious reasons, that game REALLY pushing the limits of my patience.
Patience, sport
@@jbfarley and that too!
One of your best series, for sure. Thanks!
I still remember the first time I ever played Virtua Fighter 2 on an arcade machine when I was young.
Oh cool, Tobal #1! Or as I like to call it, that fighting game that was packed in with the Final Fantasy 7 demo disc that everyone was after!
Jesper Kyd used that theme in red zone(Spinner) for genesis earlier and later on Hitman:Blood Money(Apocalypse Theme) . Every Variation of that theme is unique and an awe to hear
The greatest game that pushed limits were the friends we made along the way.
What console that come out on?
@@el-kiote the Sega friendship
You cheesy guy you
😂
Finally something to look forward to after I get off work!!
Ranger X is insane! But ridiculously hard.
Tobal characters were designed by Akira Toriyama, the creator of Dragon ball.
Wow, I thought Tobal 2 was cancelled all together! If I'm not mistaken, Tobal #1 was the first 3D fighter with 8-way running/side-stepping. Also loved the throw/counter-throw/counter-grappling it allowed without some kind of power bar penalty for using it.
Holy shit! I was just thinking about the Sack today!!
Man, did I get slapped hardcore!
Thanks Joe!
When you comment that winter sports game "gives off a streaming vibe" as if you're just reacting to FMV, that perfectly articulates the feeling I get from Cuphead.
Love Ranger X!
Also Panorama Cotton on the Genesis also looked to push the limits of the hardware. Similar in style to Space Harrier, it was a pretty looking shooter.
And going waaay back.... Solaris on the Atari 2600.
Dave covered Panorama Cotton back in Games that Push Hardware Limits 2
I've now finished the whole series, and while I understand that the focus of these videos is on the 3th to 5th generation of consoles, I do want to point out that not a single OG Xbox title has been covered so far, which shouldn't be too modern looking at how even PS3 games have been covered.
One thing that makes the OG Xbox very interesting compared to other 6th gen consoles is how it has a rudimentary implementation of pixel shaders, allowing the console to push graphics that didn't become mainstream until the the 7th generation. Some examples:
- Shrek: Not a joke suggestion, this is the very first game ever to implement deferred shading, a solution which I believe has not been used again until the 7th generation of consoles rolled out. This technique allowed the game to handle a, for the time, huge number of real-time light sources with real-time shadows to boot. To make it even more impressive the game released as a launch title for the console.
- Far Cry Instincts: This game makes liberal use of soft real-time shadows for the sun-light, and pushes a ton of foliage to the screen. I believe it also included bloom and planar reflections.
- Doom 3 & Riddick Escape from Butcher Bay: Both games that make liberal use of real-time lighting, shadows, plus normal/specular mapping. Very impressive stuff that simply could not run on other consoles at the time.
Great episode as usual time for a game sack binge session
the facial animations on tobal 2 feel close to an early game on the ps2
7:40 The camera exposure change really impressed me.
15:37 "The game runs pretty fast, a lot faster than most other polygon games on the console. In fact, IT CAN REACH UP TO TWENTY FRAMES PER SECOND -IN SOME CASES"
Unnecessary subtitles are stupid
@@jbfarley hey, how's it going! nice to see you again pal
Kawasaki was amazing I remeber I even put my chair in middle of TV so I get that vr experience. Played alot of it
Xenoblade X was awsome, and pushed Wii u to the limit.
Genius comment from a genius username.
The intro to the winter gold game is very reminiscent of spacebaĺls state of the art Amiga demo
Shows that Push Awesome Limits 1 = GAME SACK
Virtua Fighter 2 was truly mindblowing at the time, the difference between it and the VF1 port is massive.
You know, I just couldn’t get into it. I loved VF1 so much that VF 2 felt like an entirely different series. I felt like VF always had a problem adding characters who felt like they belonged and in keeping the “Virtua” flavor as the graphics for better. ( that cheesy “Sega blue skies” charisma)
I had never seen the port before and I couldn't believe what I'm seeing here actually came out on the Saturn
I got VF2 as part of that 3-game box set that came free with my Saturn (also had Virtua Cop and Daytona USA). I have to say I played that game to death back when I first got the machine back in early 1997...so much fun. I still own that 3-pack, as well as Fighting Vipers (which I like better as part of Fighters Megamix, which Sega SHOULD remake...I mean, WHO doesn't want to fight as the Hornet from Daytona?) and Last Bronx. Even though I probably enjoyed Soul Blade (Edge) more back then, Last Bronx is still a blast to play.
Games that surprised me back in the day would probably include Red Zone (Genesis) and Gungriffon (Saturn), both for their mind-blowing intros. The games themselves were good too, but especially in Red Zone's case, the intro looked like actual video, albeit in black on red.