SEGA CD The most underrated and unexplored hardware EVER :( Power Drift, Super Monaco GP, After Burner II, Space Harrier, Outrun and a lot of amazing SEGA Arcade games would be awesome on the SEGA CD with your Scaling effects!
@@TheMamaluigi300 That is actually a e pretty interesting idea , thought how can they work in harmony , maybe by having an SVP cartridge and Virtua Racing CD? This makes me wonder , what would happen if the Genesis the Mega CD and the 32x were used together properly The speed of the Genesis The scaling and rotation of the Mega CD And the polygonal graphics of the 32x
@@TheMamaluigi300 they do work in harmony. But this only allows for sprite scaling not 3D graphics. Its still only a 16 bit console. This is where 32x comes into play, with the 32x the Sega CD would only need to be there for data storage and CD sound, the Genesis and 32x could handle the rest. Sprite Scaling on the 32x was faster and better than Sega CD too. But with the Sega CD, Genesis, and 32X combined we could have any 2D ps1 game ported, and possibly a few 3D games as well. It did flat shaded polygons well but got a lil slow in the texture mapping department.
@forkaren100 Like the description says, the SNES could only scale backgrounds, not sprites. Show me a SNES game with scaling effects as good as Batman Returns or Soul Star.
Doggycharly PLZ Haha, nice one. Well, SNES can still provide some great games but it's funny to see how the 2 years released before Mega Drive kicks SNES butt in so many ways ^^ even the 3 years released before PC Engine has some advantages over the SNES.
Doggycharly PLZ SNES is not as bad as you seem to think though. Sure it has many limitations (weak CPU, most of its library run in low resolution (since its hi-res mode is quite useless), limited sprites capabilities...) but it also has stuff which help to compensate this such as its GPU or even its sound chip which can, apparently, be used to provide help for actual game (animation), Compile done this with Super Aleste and the game is impressive. Still I prefer Mega Drive specs, and even more with its CD add-on (and given specs of the planned SNES CD add-on, it wasn't as powerful as the Mega-CD).
Parallax Craze No, i don't think you understand the snes CD specs AT ALL. This is understandable because the intended design was such that the CD drive is literally just a CD drive, and the extra RAM and any coprocessors for CD games would come in a cartridge. Early specs for the cartridge, would have been a superFX 2, but in an effort to make it easier to work with, the final specs (and keep in mind this was in a cartridge which could be replaced independently of the CD unit itself) would have been a 21 mhz NEC V810 CPU, which is a 32 bit RISC Cpu. Used in NEC's PC-FX console, and Nintendo's ill fated virtual boy. (the virtual boy had many faults, but lack of processing power was not one of them). Suffice to say, had it launched at these specs it would have been vastly more powerful than the Sega CD, and more comparable to the Sega CD + 32x combo that is technically possible. If you ignore this aspect of how the snes CD was intended to work, and just look at the CD unit itself, then yes, it looks quite unimpressive. But that is not how it was designed. Like the snes itself, it was designed with the idea that the base hardware could be obsolete fairly quickly, so it was better to rely on external chips in the cartridges.
KuraIthys I said this based on SNES CD specs found on internet. Whatever additional chip in cartridge is something else. And as it is SNES CD doesn't have as many power nor features as Sega CD. Also about these additional chips, SNES hardware is weaker than expected, for example Pilot Wings wasn't supposed to rely on additional chip but due to weaker SNES final specs they had to use a chip to make it feasible. Anyway even with additional chip SNES games still have many limitations, check Star Fox for example, lower resolution than usual SNES low resolution + rather low FPS etc, and SNES CD would had to face similar limitations.
Have you seen MSU1 chip it offers snes full motion video data, CD-quality music playback, without using snes own sound...Considering snes res 256x224 with 114KB per frame...Full motion video would have 23 frames per second using dma snes capability and data decompression etc...which is pretty good for a enhaced cart
Bloodshot was programmed to run exclusively on Genesis hardwire. Look for battle frenzy. It would have run more smootly on Sega CD hardware as it was far more powerful.
Sonic CD’s special stages were a little too high-resolution for SNES to do without an enhancement chip (or just using a lower detail map). I’m kinda surprised that they didn’t use sprite scaling on the UFOs though. Wonder why they animated them instead.
Here is the definitive answer as far as the SNES is concerned. It could do sprite rotation as a Mode 7 effect. But only on 'backgrounds.' A good example of this is when you are fighting bowser in Super Mario World. Bowser rotates upside down and flies in and out of the screen. Notice how the background is black? Well its night time, yes, but it's also a clever trick. Bowser is actually the 'background'. Any time you saw real sprite rotation you will notice its only on one object and no bg.
Mega-CD do not scale sprite, it's scale BOBs ( Blitter object), sprite are part of the VDP and can't be handle by Mega-CD ASIC. ASIC can simulate fake sprites, but technically it's not really sprite.
You are absolutely correct, the Sega CD had great hardware scaling & rotation effects. Also I notice from your showcase above only one of the games was actually made and designed by Sega. If Sega would have focused on these effects and ported G-Loc, Galaxy Force, Power Drift, After Burner, Super Monaco GP, Thunder Blade, Space Harrier, Out Run, Turbo Out Run, Super Hang on etc. to the system it would have been unstoppable..
One of the biggest issues with the Sega CD was people just didn't know what it could do. I owned a Sega CD growing up and aside from Sonic CD and Ecco I only had those crappy FMV games. My only exposure to scaling effects were the bonus stages in Sonic CD and the BIOS screen, both of which I assumed the Genesis could do if developers so desired. Had I known about games like Batman Returns and Soul Star (and the many others showcased here), I probably would have got a lot more enjoyment out of my Sega CD. Very underrated and underappreciated hardware, and what good titles did exist were almost down to a matter of luck for a kid in the 90's to locate and acquire. At the time the internet was very young and not many people had it. Furthermore I was not aware of any game magazines that covered the Sega CD extensively, so I ended up with mostly underwhelming titles as I made decisions literally by looking at the box only. Developers were assuming that FMV was the future and resulted in a lot of garbage on the system. Indeed, some games shown here even look like early PlayStation or Saturn titles with their pseudo-3D appearance. Pretty amazing for a 1991 home console.
Sega had one of the most advanced 3-D technologies that was literally 25 years ahead of time before the mass market starting utilizing it. Just look up the specs for both systems (NES & SMS).
SEGA Had been promising for years to bring the pure arcade experience home. No one really thought that they could do that with 256-512KB game cartridges, but now we'd paid 300 bucks for the memory and superscaler hardware, and we'd been jipped.
This is an amazing showcase of what the best Sega CD games were like although the Bloodshot first person shooter is a port of the Mega Drive game (or Genesis if you are American) and the only difference is the CD quality music
This video is my resume of why I LOVE The Mega/SEGA CD, This thing works like an Retro Playstation, has mechanics just looking like the PlayStation consoles, he has better graphics than MegaDrive, Almost becoming an 32X, The Compressed and the CD musics, and how you can change the videogame OST putting another CD on the CD Player (That's real), and the animated cutscenes, even with pixel it can be awesome (Except for that pencil, that cursed pencil...), It's really sad what in North America, he was received really bad, and was not explored too much.
I know this is old but looking at Soul Star, especially the indoor tank/mech parts tells me a competent port of Doom could have been done on the Sega CD. Addendum- I would have left out Bloodshot. There is actually a cart version of it that runs almost identically to the Sega CD. That's right, scaling on the Genesis was done and done well.
Game Sack, a show I highly recommend, speculated (very educated guess) that Soul Star uses the scaling capabilities of the Sega CD more than any other game.
It does. I love that game. Could've been a "Starfox Killer" if Sega had supported the CD properly. It shows you that the Sega CD could've handled a Panzer Dragoon game, too, with sprites instead of polygons.
Yeah, it's too bad they abandoned all of their systems after only supporting them for a year or two, Genesis and Master System being the only exceptions.
I always have a problem with people calling things "ahead of their time". Something has to be initially introduced. When it is introduced, it is it's time. If others take longer to introduce something, that means they are late.
If it took Sega developing a CD add on to do scaling effects that were a cheap copy of what was already standard in the arcade's then I wouldn't say that was ahead of it's time, more like playing catch-up 🙄. The SNES did better mode 7 effects straight out of the box which looked better than scaling effects. I was a Sega kid growing up and I like the Megadrive but that Mega CD was an overpriced joke from the start.
@@robertmcmillan3638 If you think Mode 7 was better than what the Sega CD was capable of then you have no fucking idea what you're talking about. SNES could only scale and rotate bitmaps. Sega CD could scale and rotate sprites and bitmaps, and create elevation effects like the waves in the sewer level of Batman Returns. SNES could not do that. Look at Full Throttle: All-American Racing on the SNES. The "3D" floor was completely flat and boring. There were NO WAVES, and it was a jetski game! There was NOTHING special about Mode 7, and the SNES would have been better off with an 8 MHz 68000 CPU instead of Mode 7, like the Genesis had. Its game library wouldn't have been plagued by slowdown and cut features because of its crippled CPU, and any games hat wanted to use Mode 7 could have done it with a chip in the cart that would have got better over time.
@@madhatter8508 I'm not looking at it from a tech point of view, I'm looking and judging it from the reality of the results produced. Best examples of SNES mode 7 effects, ua-cam.com/video/aX8bX9YdDEY/v-deo.html I'm not too interested in what's technically mode 7 and what's technically sprite scaling or rotation effects etc, but the fact that Sega could have released some excellent games to showcase scaling effects like Outrun, Space Harrier or Galaxy Force but didn't and other game developers seemingly not throwing their weight behind the Mega CD speaks volumes. Spending lots of money (both Sega and the Public) to get what the SNES was doing to a similar standard out of the box wasn't a realistic option that was going to pay off. Soul Star looked good though but that's about it. FMV games like Sewer shark and Night trap were fun to look at.....for 5 minutes but in the end people wanted better than what the Mega CD was offering (or certainly for the money that Sega and retailers were asking for the Mega CD anyway).
Cool vid! Nice to see clips of these games compiled in one place. Bloodshot probably shouldn't be in there though. There was a cartridge version with identical visuals.
Jaguar XJ220 was actually Avory's first crack at the Sega CD and did NOT use hardware scaling. It was done in software using the Sega CD's 68K. Later Core Design titles DID utilize the ASIC to handle scaling and rotation. I was going to remark that your footage is grainy but then I realized this video is from 14 years ago. Uh err... carry on.
Very impressive! The graphics are sometimes to the point where they almost look like an early PlayStation game. If the Super Nintendo could not scale sprites, then could it only do it for the environment?
For actual games, the Sega CD was better integrated into the Genesis, had better sound, and played at 60fps. It actually had some of the best games of the 90s, Snatcher, Sonic CD, Soulstar, Final Fight CD...
Yeah, though you'd need either column/row trickery(columns are apparently limited to 8 pixels wide) or a lot of CPU time for any software algorithms to be done within the context of a game.
That wasn’t true hardware scaling and rotation. Software implementations are either slow, trickery, or have severe limitations. Gunstar Heroes is a perfect example of cool trickery, but you can see what they are really doing.
@@emmettturner9452 Worthy of note: Bloodshot, shown in this video, was not a CD game. It was a Megadrive/Genesis game. Dunno why it was in this vid. A lot of that machine's later games started using "proper" scaling/rotation once devs figured out how to fudge it into existence. Gunstar had some actual scaling and rotation, even if a lot of it was just cleverly-animated sprites. And then many years later, Titan go and release the Overdrive 2 demoscene product, which is like one long checklist of "this should not be possible".
Great Video mate . The Mega CD had the best scaling effects outside of the Arcade , amazing for a machine made in 1991 . Unlike what most people love to make out , the Mega Cd was a powerfull machine and had quite a lot of top games too .
Man I wish that the Sega CD wasn't so underrated and hated. It's an awesome add-on for the genesis and is a very powerful machine! And yes while it was more expensive than say just buying a Super FX chip game, it's kind of worth it! I'm so glad that I have one, and I will always treasure it.
Agreed, its great hardware and certainly underappreciated, and I love how its real capabilities are now coming to light. However if a little more thought and development time went into it, it could have been even better. If they included the scaling capabilities, while somehow integrating the processing power and color palette increase offered by the 32x, it would have been the ultimate addon, and probably would have still been relevant even after the launch of the PlayStation, despite being less powerful than that juggernaut.
I think it was just hated because SOJ cancelled all Sega CD game development in 1992 or 1993, so people had spent $400 on what was effectively a dead system.
@@Nexus9_KD6-4.8 In hindsight, a theoretical addon like that coud've probably been made instead of the Saturn, giving a few more years until the release of a 64-bit console that would compete with the N64.
To save a few people a few minutes, that first track listed as batman returns is specifically "Track 12 (Act 3 Driving Stages 1-5)". Well I thought it was a smooth enough groove to track down anyway.
SegaCD doesn't scale Genesis sprites. It has a custom graphics chip that lets it perform scaled/rotated blits to/from its work RAM (to a framebuffer). Then it tells the Genesis CPU to DMA it to its tile maps so it can be displayed on the screen. There are two limitations here: - Because of the tile format large blocky sections are only 16 colors, this is really apparent in some of the games shown (compared to 256 on SNES) - It can only do it at like 15-20fps (compared to 60 on SNES)
@tonmasboy AOF on the SNES wasn't scaling sprites. Mode 7 was used to do the screen zooming by drawing the entire portion of the screen underneath the black bar (where the HUD is) as a single background layer and scaling that toward and away from the screen. This was possible since the original Neo Geo game had flat backgrounds with no parallax and did no perspective correction with the fighter sprites during the scaling so this worked out nicely for the Mode 7 method.
Unfortunately extra colours can't be added to the MD through the cart/expansion slot. The only way this could be done was through an extra cable to layer the video (such as the one used by the 32x). It's also kinda sad that most of these games could've been done on the plain old MD, bit they would've ran at about 8-15 fps.
Apple was able to get the 68000 to do circles graphically through the use of addition to simulate quadratics. Doing this, trigonometry could be possible, thus allowing the base Mega Drive to do 3D vector scaling. Paired with something capable of hardware sprite manipulation, an extra processor and video processor, and a secondary ram cache, the CD might be able to manipulate sprites to match vector points calculated via Apple's formulas, while all the main CPU has to do is render the pixels using the standard blast processing technique (matching the frequency of the TV to output pixels as pure color data) and output the sound made by the sound chip, creating primitive texture-mapped 3D. Could this be possible with the limited RAM and processing speed of the MD-CD combo? If it could work that would be really cool.
Whay a moron thinking the Sega CD was responsible for the scaling in BloodShot!!! God bro, do you even game. Just playing, that dude from GameSack told me to say all this. Love ya Joe, keep up the excellent work
Bloodshot is not using hardware for scaling or rotation. Hardware is only used when mirroring top and bottom of the screen. The walls are symmetrical vertically.
hey what a beautiful music you choose to present this video at the beggining.. it is taken from batman returns driving scene level 3 one of the most incredible background music ever made in a video game by genius spence nielsen!!
That "Sewers of Gotham" level in Batman makes me sad that we never got a jetski game for the Sega CD. It's especially atrocious since Sega owned the license for WaveRunner, and they didn't even port it to the Saturn!
Soul star makes the sega cd look like it could have done a decent port of galaxy force, or at least pull off a solid toned down sequel. Im so pissed we didn't get a single great super scaler port from sega lol, i would have loved seeing something as ancient and primitive as the original hang on brought over even. Even the shitty 32x got some good sega arcade ports but the mega cd got basically nothing
The Genesis had the hardware to do a decent port of Galaxy Force with no addons, but we got ripped off by SEGA once again with yet another lazy port. Now we're seeing tons of 3D limit pushers like Starfox DMA that do 12-23 fps on bone stock Genesis hardware.
I'm simply awed by seeing these games. I was such a hardcore gamer. I loved and respected Sega, bc they had THE MOST POWERFUL ARCADE DIVISION. No computer, at the time, could even come close to their processing power in the arcades (System 16, Y-Board, System 32). That being said, I must agree that the problem with Sega was that they didn't support their hardware. It was 2 bad that Nintendo had exclusive 3rd party support rule. If they didn't the SMS would of been a much better system.
Nice showcase, but as frigginjoe stated, Sega really didn't take advantage of the technological upgrades by offering more games from their library. An increased color palette would have really helped, too. As much as I loved the Sega CD version of, say, Final Fight, it would have been better than arcade perfect with more color.
What about the fact that it can easily handle large-scale sprites, or even do sprites that can grow and bend? Isn't that part of scaling, too, or is that more of the FX Chip 2? Think of the processing power it takes to do that scaling and rotating. The Sega CD's got muscle and power! Very cool music choice, and well done with the video clips.
true thats why the genesis amazed me even more then the sega cd,the sega cd obviously could deliver good stuff but the colours still where pretty grainy.
So unbelievable that they never made Outrunners for the Sega CD. A whole line of arcade superscalers and a console that scales sprites but Sega just... What, forgets?
Baffles me as well. Thunderblade, Galaxy Force 2, Outrunners, Line of Fire, Power Drift, could have all been ported to the Mega CD. IMHO the Wondermega should have been the f revision of the Megadrive rather than the add-on route.
As a big fan of battlecorps this video actually has interested me in soul star. Its also from core and it seems to make the most of the system hardware. So much color.
Came here to leave a nasty comment 🤬 My little sister knows more about Sega CD scaling 😤. Joe from Game Sack sent me, he’s clearly the superior Joe.... not even close!
When you think about it, the SEGACD could kick the SNES's ass with the graphical capabilities. A shame it didn't do AS well as the PC Engine CD in Japan
The Sega Genesis was a part of the System 16 board from the sega Arcade system, the Sega CD was the other part, that has the ability of zoom, rotation and so...but with one more processor tham the original System 16 board ..it was to be so great, the problen, in US they choose the Movie games, ... My list of stuff that coudl be done: Based on Batman Returns car stage: Monaco GP (there was f1 beyond limit but it is another concept to me. a Top Gear game type and so... a lot of things !
A couple of questions: 1. Is NightStalker better on Mega CD or Saturn? 2. Is Bloodshot significantly better on Mega CD than on the Megadrive? Both in terms of gameplay and in showing off scaling. Thanks in advance for your feedback!
thanks for doing this. of all the consoles I ever played and own(ed) and there's like 20 of them this is the most underrated. it got hated on for no reason. 220 games were released for it of which the vast majority weren't even fmv games. yes it always gets the fmv hate bullshit and back in early 90s fmv was awesome. the sega cd was revolutionary in a time when virtua no one had a cd-player.
"A few games "cheated" by having extra chips in the cartridge to scale sprites." Have you ever seen "Super Turrican 2" and "Rendering Ranger" for SNES/SFC? Two games which do NOT use any extra-chip at all. These are two of the most impressive 16bit games I have ever seen. Especialy RR(a game programmed by ONE man!) shows what the SFC really could do. The SNES didn't need any extra chip for scaling and rotations if programmed well.
I think the reason Outrun didn't get a port to Sega CD was because it already was ported to Mastersystem , then the Mega Drive/Genesis. The Sega CD had amazing hardware for the time and would have done most arcade games justice. The only reason 32x got a port of Outrun was because Sega of America pushed to get 32x released and Sega of Japan didn't want it released as they wanted to push Saturn. So they threw out some old arcade games on 32x as they were busy with Saturn
@Dant2142 Interesting, do you think the sega CD version of Blood-Shot would have run smoother if it had taken advantage of the scaling properties of the system? Ether way, even though Zero Tolerance was a better game, in my opinion, Blood Shot seemed to have a better rendering engine.
It's such a shame that the SEGA CD didn't make use of it's secondary sound chip much. (Which, btw is the Ricoh RF5C164, an 8-channel sample-based sound chip. Similar to the SNES' APU)
The SNES could only scale/rotate a background layer. The FX chip could be added and it could appear to scale sprites that way. See my response to a similar question near the beginning of the comments section.
It strikes me as stupid that they didn't use the Mega CD to make quality arcade ports. That's why people bought Sega consoles and was a big part of their brand.
It's true, the SNES could only scale/rotate the background layers. Many people point to the final boss battle in Super Mario World and claim it is a sprite. Nope. Bowser is actually a background layer. BG layers don't have to take up a huge portion of the screen. They can be any size. A few games "cheated" by having extra chips in the cartridge to scale sprites.
Sega should have done more by porting some arcade games like Space Harrier, OutRun, After Burner and more to Sega CD/Mega CD. Even should have RAM Cartridge with SVP chip for near arcade perfect ports. But nope Sega of America focuses on FMVs at the time. The reason Sega CD failed in my opinion.
mateuszpapis, do you know where i could read what the CD32 was really capable off?. You say it has a 3d accelerator, which i already knew, but i cant find what it was all about.
There is also the possibility of having one object rotate like I said in my last post and still actually have a background. This is used when fighting the koopa kids in Super Mario World. The koopa is the background.. The actual background you see is actually sprites in the foreground. So it's reversed. Also, the Super FX (2) chip added the ability for FULL sprite rotation and scaling on multiple objects, not just backgrounds. As far as I know, it was only used in SMW2: Yoshi's Island
The Sega CD is Such a PowerFull Machine I WIll Never Forget It Gave Me so Many Years of Joy and Happiness i Still Love It ! This is a Master Compilation ***** Thank You so Much
Just purchased a Sega Gens model 1. The guy that sold me the system did not have the RF cable or power supply. Instead he gave me an NES RF cable and power supply. Could I use these to get my Gens 1 working?Thanks in advance.
SEGA CD The most underrated and unexplored hardware EVER :(
Power Drift, Super Monaco GP, After Burner II, Space Harrier, Outrun and a lot of amazing SEGA Arcade games would be awesome on the SEGA CD with your Scaling effects!
P. H. G. F. Heck with the MD and CD CPUs working in harmony in addition, it could probably run Virtua Racing!
@@TheMamaluigi300 That is actually a e pretty interesting idea , thought how can they work in harmony , maybe by having an SVP cartridge and Virtua Racing CD? This makes me wonder , what would happen if the Genesis the Mega CD and the 32x were used together properly
The speed of the Genesis
The scaling and rotation of the Mega CD
And the polygonal graphics of the 32x
Калоян Касабов I dunno, I thought the sega CD had access to the genesis processers
@@TheMamaluigi300 they do work in harmony. But this only allows for sprite scaling not 3D graphics. Its still only a 16 bit console. This is where 32x comes into play, with the 32x the Sega CD would only need to be there for data storage and CD sound, the Genesis and 32x could handle the rest. Sprite Scaling on the 32x was faster and better than Sega CD too. But with the Sega CD, Genesis, and 32X combined we could have any 2D ps1 game ported, and possibly a few 3D games as well. It did flat shaded polygons well but got a lil slow in the texture mapping department.
Unexplored = 32X
@forkaren100 Like the description says, the SNES could only scale backgrounds, not sprites. Show me a SNES game with scaling effects as good as Batman Returns or Soul Star.
Game Sack calm down joe
Game Sack ~ definitely .
Yoshi's Island?
@@rsmith02 Yes, but with an add-on chip in the cart, which any console could technically also do.
@@ChadDidNothingWrong Yes, and the Mega-CD was a physically larger and more expensive add-on chip.
Some Mega-CD games even look like Playstation games which say a lot for a 1991 CD add-on!
Doggycharly PLZ Haha, nice one. Well, SNES can still provide some great games but it's funny to see how the 2 years released before Mega Drive kicks SNES butt in so many ways ^^ even the 3 years released before PC Engine has some advantages over the SNES.
Doggycharly PLZ SNES is not as bad as you seem to think though. Sure it has many limitations (weak CPU, most of its library run in low resolution (since its hi-res mode is quite useless), limited sprites capabilities...) but it also has stuff which help to compensate this such as its GPU or even its sound chip which can, apparently, be used to provide help for actual game (animation), Compile done this with Super Aleste and the game is impressive. Still I prefer Mega Drive specs, and even more with its CD add-on (and given specs of the planned SNES CD add-on, it wasn't as powerful as the Mega-CD).
Parallax Craze No, i don't think you understand the snes CD specs AT ALL. This is understandable because the intended design was such that the CD drive is literally just a CD drive, and the extra RAM and any coprocessors for CD games would come in a cartridge.
Early specs for the cartridge, would have been a superFX 2, but in an effort to make it easier to work with, the final specs (and keep in mind this was in a cartridge which could be replaced independently of the CD unit itself) would have been a 21 mhz NEC V810 CPU, which is a 32 bit RISC Cpu.
Used in NEC's PC-FX console, and Nintendo's ill fated virtual boy. (the virtual boy had many faults, but lack of processing power was not one of them).
Suffice to say, had it launched at these specs it would have been vastly more powerful than the Sega CD, and more comparable to the Sega CD + 32x combo that is technically possible.
If you ignore this aspect of how the snes CD was intended to work, and just look at the CD unit itself, then yes, it looks quite unimpressive.
But that is not how it was designed.
Like the snes itself, it was designed with the idea that the base hardware could be obsolete fairly quickly, so it was better to rely on external chips in the cartridges.
KuraIthys I said this based on SNES CD specs found on internet. Whatever additional chip in cartridge is something else. And as it is SNES CD doesn't have as many power nor features as Sega CD.
Also about these additional chips, SNES hardware is weaker than expected, for example Pilot Wings wasn't supposed to rely on additional chip but due to weaker SNES final specs they had to use a chip to make it feasible.
Anyway even with additional chip SNES games still have many limitations, check Star Fox for example, lower resolution than usual SNES low resolution + rather low FPS etc, and SNES CD would had to face similar limitations.
Have you seen MSU1 chip it offers snes full motion video data, CD-quality music playback, without using snes own sound...Considering snes res 256x224 with 114KB per frame...Full motion video would have 23 frames per second using dma snes capability and data decompression etc...which is pretty good for a enhaced cart
These scaling effects are amezing it's sometimes hard to believe that those roads for example are just 2d.
Bloodshot was programmed to run exclusively on Genesis hardwire. Look for battle frenzy. It would have run more smootly on Sega CD hardware as it was far more powerful.
Sonic CD’s special stages were a little too high-resolution for SNES to do without an enhancement chip (or just using a lower detail map). I’m kinda surprised that they didn’t use sprite scaling on the UFOs though. Wonder why they animated them instead.
Here is the definitive answer as far as the SNES is concerned.
It could do sprite rotation as a Mode 7 effect. But only on 'backgrounds.' A good example of this is when you are fighting bowser in Super Mario World. Bowser rotates upside down and flies in and out of the screen. Notice how the background is black? Well its night time, yes, but it's also a clever trick. Bowser is actually the 'background'. Any time you saw real sprite rotation you will notice its only on one object and no bg.
Feels also very inspired by Sega's System 32 arcade board.
Like the description says, the SNES can only scale background images without extra chips. Sega CD can scale multiple objects simultaneously.
Mega-CD do not scale sprite, it's scale BOBs ( Blitter object), sprite are part of the VDP and can't be handle by Mega-CD ASIC. ASIC can simulate fake sprites, but technically it's not really sprite.
You are absolutely correct, the Sega CD had great hardware scaling & rotation effects. Also I notice from your showcase above only one of the games was actually made and designed by Sega. If Sega would have focused on these effects and ported G-Loc, Galaxy Force, Power Drift, After Burner, Super Monaco GP, Thunder Blade, Space Harrier, Out Run, Turbo Out Run, Super Hang on etc. to the system it would have been unstoppable..
One of the biggest issues with the Sega CD was people just didn't know what it could do. I owned a Sega CD growing up and aside from Sonic CD and Ecco I only had those crappy FMV games. My only exposure to scaling effects were the bonus stages in Sonic CD and the BIOS screen, both of which I assumed the Genesis could do if developers so desired. Had I known about games like Batman Returns and Soul Star (and the many others showcased here), I probably would have got a lot more enjoyment out of my Sega CD. Very underrated and underappreciated hardware, and what good titles did exist were almost down to a matter of luck for a kid in the 90's to locate and acquire. At the time the internet was very young and not many people had it. Furthermore I was not aware of any game magazines that covered the Sega CD extensively, so I ended up with mostly underwhelming titles as I made decisions literally by looking at the box only. Developers were assuming that FMV was the future and resulted in a lot of garbage on the system. Indeed, some games shown here even look like early PlayStation or Saturn titles with their pseudo-3D appearance. Pretty amazing for a 1991 home console.
Sega had one of the most advanced 3-D technologies that was literally 25 years ahead of time before the mass market starting utilizing it. Just look up the specs for both systems (NES & SMS).
90s 3D animation is the most beautiful aesthetic known to man
Joe sent me to tell you I'm too legit to quit and your crew is through.
What you added a note about Bloodshot?
This was a trap!
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Jo.....I can't believe this was you. I found this ages ago not realising..... you gofer!
I buy my segacd in 2009 because of this youtube video! I have the genesis for 30 years and segacd is cool! Tnx for the video
They couldve made an arcade perfect port of Outrun with this thing.
I used to imagine if Sega ported their arcade super scalers onto this system. Would’ve been so awesome back then!!!
SEGA Had been promising for years to bring the pure arcade experience home. No one really thought that they could do that with 256-512KB game cartridges, but now we'd paid 300 bucks for the memory and superscaler hardware, and we'd been jipped.
This is an amazing showcase of what the best Sega CD games were like although the Bloodshot first person shooter is a port of the Mega Drive game (or Genesis if you are American) and the only difference is the CD quality music
This video is my resume of why I LOVE The Mega/SEGA CD, This thing works like an Retro Playstation, has mechanics just looking like the PlayStation consoles, he has better graphics than MegaDrive, Almost becoming an 32X, The Compressed and the CD musics, and how you can change the videogame OST putting another CD on the CD Player (That's real), and the animated cutscenes, even with pixel it can be awesome (Except for that pencil, that cursed pencil...), It's really sad what in North America, he was received really bad, and was not explored too much.
I know this is old but looking at Soul Star, especially the indoor tank/mech parts tells me a competent port of Doom could have been done on the Sega CD.
Addendum- I would have left out Bloodshot. There is actually a cart version of it that runs almost identically to the Sega CD. That's right, scaling on the Genesis was done and done well.
That soul Star game looks like it uses the hardware pretty well!
Game Sack, a show I highly recommend, speculated (very educated guess) that Soul Star uses the scaling capabilities of the Sega CD more than any other game.
Brandon Michels I've seen some gamesack videos but not the Mega CD one. I'll have to have a look.
It does. I love that game. Could've been a "Starfox Killer" if Sega had supported the CD properly. It shows you that the Sega CD could've handled a Panzer Dragoon game, too, with sprites instead of polygons.
@@madhatter8508 I think Thunderblade is pretty impressive too. Not as impressive as soul star though.
SEGA was always clearly ahead of its time.
That's not an opinion it's known fact.
Yeah, it's too bad they abandoned all of their systems after only supporting them for a year or two, Genesis and Master System being the only exceptions.
I always have a problem with people calling things "ahead of their time". Something has to be initially introduced. When it is introduced, it is it's time. If others take longer to introduce something, that means they are late.
If it took Sega developing a CD add on to do scaling effects that were a cheap copy of what was already standard in the arcade's then I wouldn't say that was ahead of it's time, more like playing catch-up 🙄.
The SNES did better mode 7 effects straight out of the box which looked better than scaling effects.
I was a Sega kid growing up and I like the Megadrive but that Mega CD was an overpriced joke from the start.
@@robertmcmillan3638 If you think Mode 7 was better than what the Sega CD was capable of then you have no fucking idea what you're talking about. SNES could only scale and rotate bitmaps. Sega CD could scale and rotate sprites and bitmaps, and create elevation effects like the waves in the sewer level of Batman Returns. SNES could not do that. Look at Full Throttle: All-American Racing on the SNES. The "3D" floor was completely flat and boring. There were NO WAVES, and it was a jetski game! There was NOTHING special about Mode 7, and the SNES would have been better off with an 8 MHz 68000 CPU instead of Mode 7, like the Genesis had. Its game library wouldn't have been plagued by slowdown and cut features because of its crippled CPU, and any games hat wanted to use Mode 7 could have done it with a chip in the cart that would have got better over time.
@@madhatter8508 I'm not looking at it from a tech point of view, I'm looking and judging it from the reality of the results produced.
Best examples of SNES mode 7 effects, ua-cam.com/video/aX8bX9YdDEY/v-deo.html
I'm not too interested in what's technically mode 7 and what's technically sprite scaling or rotation effects etc, but the fact that Sega could have released some excellent games to showcase scaling effects like Outrun, Space Harrier or Galaxy Force but didn't and other game developers seemingly not throwing their weight behind the Mega CD speaks volumes.
Spending lots of money (both Sega and the Public) to get what the SNES was doing to a similar standard out of the box wasn't a realistic option that was going to pay off.
Soul Star looked good though but that's about it.
FMV games like Sewer shark and Night trap were fun to look at.....for 5 minutes but in the end people wanted better than what the Mega CD was offering (or certainly for the money that Sega and retailers were asking for the Mega CD anyway).
Cool vid! Nice to see clips of these games compiled in one place.
Bloodshot probably shouldn't be in there though. There was a cartridge version with identical visuals.
Jaguar XJ220 was actually Avory's first crack at the Sega CD and did NOT use hardware scaling. It was done in software using the Sega CD's 68K. Later Core Design titles DID utilize the ASIC to handle scaling and rotation.
I was going to remark that your footage is grainy but then I realized this video is from 14 years ago. Uh err... carry on.
Very impressive! The graphics are sometimes to the point where they almost look like an early PlayStation game. If the Super Nintendo could not scale sprites, then could it only do it for the environment?
Soul Star still looks awesome! I'm always amazed.
In anyone's humblest opinion, is the Sega CD better than the 32x or the other way around?
For actual games, the Sega CD was better integrated into the Genesis, had better sound, and played at 60fps. It actually had some of the best games of the 90s, Snatcher, Sonic CD, Soulstar, Final Fight CD...
The sega genesis can do scaling and rotation without the cd add-on gunstar heroes is a perfect example
+Vampirerockstar Road Rash and Outlander guys
Mega Turrican, Adventures of Batman & Robin, Alien Soldier, Red Zone
Yeah, though you'd need either column/row trickery(columns are apparently limited to 8 pixels wide) or a lot of CPU time for any software algorithms to be done within the context of a game.
That wasn’t true hardware scaling and rotation. Software implementations are either slow, trickery, or have severe limitations. Gunstar Heroes is a perfect example of cool trickery, but you can see what they are really doing.
@@emmettturner9452 Worthy of note: Bloodshot, shown in this video, was not a CD game. It was a Megadrive/Genesis game. Dunno why it was in this vid. A lot of that machine's later games started using "proper" scaling/rotation once devs figured out how to fudge it into existence. Gunstar had some actual scaling and rotation, even if a lot of it was just cleverly-animated sprites.
And then many years later, Titan go and release the Overdrive 2 demoscene product, which is like one long checklist of "this should not be possible".
I wonder if the Amiga CD32 could do this?
Great Video mate . The Mega CD had the best scaling effects outside of the Arcade , amazing for a machine made in 1991 .
Unlike what most people love to make out , the Mega Cd was a powerfull machine and had quite a lot of top games too .
Sorry this is 15years late but yeah I agree I even heard it could boost the Sega Genesis color palette
@@thetriggeredone3461 no that's the 32x
Man I wish that the Sega CD wasn't so underrated and hated. It's an awesome add-on for the genesis and is a very powerful machine! And yes while it was more expensive than say just buying a Super FX chip game, it's kind of worth it! I'm so glad that I have one, and I will always treasure it.
Agreed, its great hardware and certainly underappreciated, and I love how its real capabilities are now coming to light. However if a little more thought and development time went into it, it could have been even better. If they included the scaling capabilities, while somehow integrating the processing power and color palette increase offered by the 32x, it would have been the ultimate addon, and probably would have still been relevant even after the launch of the PlayStation, despite being less powerful than that juggernaut.
Brandon Michels I can certainly agree with that
I think it was just hated because SOJ cancelled all Sega CD game development in 1992 or 1993, so people had spent $400 on what was effectively a dead system.
@@Nexus9_KD6-4.8 In hindsight, a theoretical addon like that coud've probably been made instead of the Saturn, giving a few more years until the release of a 64-bit console that would compete with the N64.
@@Nexus9_KD6-4.8 think of the Sega CD as what the Genesis would have been if they cut down of development costs
To save a few people a few minutes, that first track listed as batman returns is specifically "Track 12 (Act 3 Driving Stages 1-5)". Well I thought it was a smooth enough groove to track down anyway.
Sir you saved me more than a few minutes. This guy chose some great tunes for this video.
SegaCD doesn't scale Genesis sprites. It has a custom graphics chip that lets it perform scaled/rotated blits to/from its work RAM (to a framebuffer). Then it tells the Genesis CPU to DMA it to its tile maps so it can be displayed on the screen. There are two limitations here:
- Because of the tile format large blocky sections are only 16 colors, this is really apparent in some of the games shown (compared to 256 on SNES)
- It can only do it at like 15-20fps (compared to 60 on SNES)
Cliffhanger was impressive
@tonmasboy AOF on the SNES wasn't scaling sprites. Mode 7 was used to do the screen zooming by drawing the entire portion of the screen underneath the black bar (where the HUD is) as a single background layer and scaling that toward and away from the screen. This was possible since the original Neo Geo game had flat backgrounds with no parallax and did no perspective correction with the fighter sprites during the scaling so this worked out nicely for the Mode 7 method.
Unfortunately extra colours can't be added to the MD through the cart/expansion slot. The only way this could be done was through an extra cable to layer the video (such as the one used by the 32x). It's also kinda sad that most of these games could've been done on the plain old MD, bit they would've ran at about 8-15 fps.
Joe from the future sent me here...had something to do with greendog
Apple was able to get the 68000 to do circles graphically through the use of addition to simulate quadratics. Doing this, trigonometry could be possible, thus allowing the base Mega Drive to do 3D vector scaling. Paired with something capable of hardware sprite manipulation, an extra processor and video processor, and a secondary ram cache, the CD might be able to manipulate sprites to match vector points calculated via Apple's formulas, while all the main CPU has to do is render the pixels using the standard blast processing technique (matching the frequency of the TV to output pixels as pure color data) and output the sound made by the sound chip, creating primitive texture-mapped 3D. Could this be possible with the limited RAM and processing speed of the MD-CD combo? If it could work that would be really cool.
Whay a moron thinking the Sega CD was responsible for the scaling in BloodShot!!! God bro, do you even game. Just playing, that dude from GameSack told me to say all this. Love ya Joe, keep up the excellent work
Bloodshot is not using hardware for scaling or rotation.
Hardware is only used when mirroring top and bottom of the screen.
The walls are symmetrical vertically.
@SomeFluffer64 No system needs a CD add on.
pc engine does xD
hey what a beautiful music you choose to present this video at the beggining.. it is taken from batman returns driving scene level 3 one of the most incredible background music ever made in a video game by genius spence nielsen!!
That "Sewers of Gotham" level in Batman makes me sad that we never got a jetski game for the Sega CD. It's especially atrocious since Sega owned the license for WaveRunner, and they didn't even port it to the Saturn!
Soul star makes the sega cd look like it could have done a decent port of galaxy force, or at least pull off a solid toned down sequel.
Im so pissed we didn't get a single great super scaler port from sega lol, i would have loved seeing something as ancient and primitive as the original hang on brought over even.
Even the shitty 32x got some good sega arcade ports but the mega cd got basically nothing
The Genesis had the hardware to do a decent port of Galaxy Force with no addons, but we got ripped off by SEGA once again with yet another lazy port.
Now we're seeing tons of 3D limit pushers like Starfox DMA that do 12-23 fps on bone stock Genesis hardware.
Future Joe sent me here.
cool video, wish the sega cd had more games like these
Ikr its too bad it failed miserable because of those shitty ass full motion videos in games
I'm simply awed by seeing these games. I was such a hardcore gamer. I loved and respected Sega, bc they had THE MOST POWERFUL ARCADE DIVISION. No computer, at the time, could even come close to their processing power in the arcades (System 16, Y-Board, System 32).
That being said, I must agree that the problem with Sega was that they didn't support their hardware.
It was 2 bad that Nintendo had exclusive 3rd party support rule. If they didn't the SMS would of been a much better system.
Nice showcase, but as frigginjoe stated, Sega really didn't take advantage of the technological upgrades by offering more games from their library. An increased color palette would have really helped, too. As much as I loved the Sega CD version of, say, Final Fight, it would have been better than arcade perfect with more color.
I bought a 3-1 power supply. It was easier to find than a official Sega Genesis power supply. I am happy with it. Thank you for the info.
What about the fact that it can easily handle large-scale sprites, or even do sprites that can grow and bend? Isn't that part of scaling, too, or is that more of the FX Chip 2? Think of the processing power it takes to do that scaling and rotating. The Sega CD's got muscle and power! Very cool music choice, and well done with the video clips.
What music did you use in this video? I want to listen to it!
true thats why the genesis amazed me even more then the sega cd,the sega cd obviously could deliver good stuff but the colours still where pretty grainy.
So unbelievable that they never made Outrunners for the Sega CD. A whole line of arcade superscalers and a console that scales sprites but Sega just... What, forgets?
Baffles me as well. Thunderblade, Galaxy Force 2, Outrunners, Line of Fire, Power Drift, could have all been ported to the Mega CD. IMHO the Wondermega should have been the f revision of the Megadrive rather than the add-on route.
?,i know thegenesis may have a max of 64 colours in screen but they use lots of colours per level.
As a big fan of battlecorps this video actually has interested me in soul star. Its also from core and it seems to make the most of the system hardware.
So much color.
Joe sent me....
Came here to leave a nasty comment 🤬 My little sister knows more about Sega CD scaling 😤. Joe from Game Sack sent me, he’s clearly the superior Joe.... not even close!
Can't remember Sly ever surfing in the film Cliff Hanger?
A nice piece of history is the Mega CD and home to some genuinely fine FMV games
When you think about it, the SEGACD could kick the SNES's ass with the graphical capabilities. A shame it didn't do AS well as the PC Engine CD in Japan
beautiful music!!
Nice video...mate. Thank you for sharing those memories we all grew up with!
Hey , the 3D stages from "3 Ninjas Kicking Back" is missing
The Sega Genesis was a part of the System 16 board from the sega Arcade system, the Sega CD was the other part, that has the ability of zoom, rotation and so...but with one more processor tham the original System 16 board ..it was to be so great, the problen, in US they choose the Movie games, ...
My list of stuff that coudl be done:
Based on Batman Returns car stage: Monaco GP (there was f1 beyond limit but it is another concept to me. a Top Gear game type and so... a lot of things !
The mode 7 of Sega
A couple of questions:
1. Is NightStalker better on Mega CD or Saturn?
2. Is Bloodshot significantly better on Mega CD than on the Megadrive? Both in terms of gameplay and in showing off scaling.
Thanks in advance for your feedback!
Bloodshot not use SegaCD hardware abilities. Soundtracks only.
thanks for doing this. of all the consoles I ever played and own(ed) and there's like 20 of them this is the most underrated. it got hated on for no reason. 220 games were released for it of which the vast majority weren't even fmv games. yes it always gets the fmv hate bullshit and back in early 90s fmv was awesome. the sega cd was revolutionary in a time when virtua no one had a cd-player.
Sorry this is 10years later but I agree
Joe sent me! You're a fool! ;-)
Wow ,i had no idea the sega cd was capable of such beautiful graphics.
Yes, this has been pointed out many times I think.
"A few games "cheated" by having extra chips in the cartridge to scale sprites."
Have you ever seen "Super Turrican 2" and "Rendering Ranger" for SNES/SFC? Two games which do NOT use any extra-chip at all.
These are two of the most impressive 16bit games I have ever seen. Especialy RR(a game programmed by ONE man!) shows what the SFC really could do.
The SNES didn't need any extra chip for scaling and rotations if programmed well.
These songs though.
Yeah, I did wonder about Bloodshot. I've never seen a cartridge version, but I'll take your word for it.
I think the reason Outrun didn't get a port to Sega CD was because it already was ported to Mastersystem , then the Mega Drive/Genesis. The Sega CD had amazing hardware for the time and would have done most arcade games justice.
The only reason 32x got a port of Outrun was because Sega of America pushed to get 32x released and Sega of Japan didn't want it released as they wanted to push Saturn. So they threw out some old arcade games on 32x as they were busy with Saturn
Is there a video of how did they do that, I just wanna know.
@Dant2142 Interesting, do you think the sega CD version of Blood-Shot would have run smoother if it had taken advantage of the scaling properties of the system?
Ether way, even though Zero Tolerance was a better game, in my opinion, Blood Shot seemed to have a better rendering engine.
It's such a shame that the SEGA CD didn't make use of it's secondary sound chip much. (Which, btw is the Ricoh RF5C164, an 8-channel sample-based sound chip. Similar to the SNES' APU)
Sonic cd does
@@thetriggeredone3461 Yes, but I'm talking about other games.
The SNES could only scale/rotate a background layer. The FX chip could be added and it could appear to scale sprites that way. See my response to a similar question near the beginning of the comments section.
@Nintendavin I thought that was a background later used as bowser?
It is a shame that " Road Rash " of MegaCD not use this technique
Yes , its sad....
Pelacanyes but dem cut scenes doh
Greendog rules!
when you said Sega started going off their rocker 4 days ago
did you mean didn't Sega want arcade games on Mega CD ?
It strikes me as stupid that they didn't use the Mega CD to make quality arcade ports. That's why people bought Sega consoles and was a big part of their brand.
Very nice video
Very nice examples
(great system)
It's true, the SNES could only scale/rotate the background layers. Many people point to the final boss battle in Super Mario World and claim it is a sprite. Nope. Bowser is actually a background layer. BG layers don't have to take up a huge portion of the screen. They can be any size. A few games "cheated" by having extra chips in the cartridge to scale sprites.
Here from the recent game sack episode
@Dant2142 There was Racing Aces, which was polygonal.
Wow... surprisingly powerful.
Got some video samples that can match the Batman scenes for example?
Why couldn't the UFOs be scaled in Sonic CD?
So the Mega CD was actually overpriced junk then as we mostly all suspected back in the day.
They could, but for whatever reason they just didn't.
Sega should have done more by porting some arcade games like Space Harrier, OutRun, After Burner and more to Sega CD/Mega CD. Even should have RAM Cartridge with SVP chip for near arcade perfect ports. But nope Sega of America focuses on FMVs at the time. The reason Sega CD failed in my opinion.
In 1992, they could've done a 128KB RAM card with a 10MIPS ARM60 running at 12.5MHz, like the 3DO.
mateuszpapis, do you know where i could read what the CD32 was really capable off?. You say it has a 3d accelerator, which i already knew, but i cant find what it was all about.
@carlitoparadise There was Racing Aces, which was polygonal.
Awesome music, what's the soundtrack at the beginning?
There is also the possibility of having one object rotate like I said in my last post and still actually have a background. This is used when fighting the koopa kids in Super Mario World. The koopa is the background.. The actual background you see is actually sprites in the foreground. So it's reversed.
Also, the Super FX (2) chip added the ability for FULL sprite rotation and scaling on multiple objects, not just backgrounds. As far as I know, it was only used in SMW2: Yoshi's Island
if snes couldn't scale sprites, they made a great job on art of fighting that features zoom in real time!!
the music was awesome, can u tell us where the music was lifted?
i also would live to know. especially the music on soul star
The Sega CD is Such a PowerFull Machine I WIll Never Forget
It Gave Me so Many Years of Joy and Happiness i Still Love It !
This is a Master Compilation *****
Thank You so Much
Great video! Thank you! What is the first song from?
Just purchased a Sega Gens model 1. The guy that sold me the system did not have the RF cable or power supply. Instead he gave me an NES RF cable and power supply. Could I use these to get my Gens 1 working?Thanks in advance.
*MEAN COMMENT*