I miss this era where hardware from each of the major console makers was sufficiently bespoke and implemented in unique ways that one could easily tell what was a TG16, a Genesis/MD or a SNES/SFC. Same for the audio. Nowadays I challenge anyone to determine if a screen grab from a multiplatform game is from a PS5 or an Xbox Series X (Series S is easier to detect but between the two full-fat consoles, its very difficult to tell them apart). PS: Could I make a request for a video on the C64?
In Mario Kart, the trick isn't interlaced mode. It's the big black separator bar between images. It's there to give the game time to set up the second view. They're the same image, after all.
@Retro48K526 the split screen two player mode and the rear view mirror,I believe lifetime, are done by changing the coordinates of the view port during hdma. So it renders the first player perspective, then it just switches to the second players location and renders from that perspective. They give themselves time to make those changes during the black space between the two renders.
I just watched you SNES and Genesis/Mega Drive videos back-to-back. Both are excellent, however I do wish you touched on the SNES’ Sony sound chip, which gave the SNES such a distinct sound versus the competition. Also, I would love to see more on this generation of gaming, like the PC Engine/Turbo GraFX-16 and the Neo Geo, if you were so inclined. A few handheld videos would also be welcome (GameBoy Advance and how it compares to the SNES, the Game Gear, Lynx, Virtual Boy…). New Subscriber. I love your channel so far and so can’t wait to dive deeper! Thank you for your hard work! ❤❤❤❤❤❤❤
Cool video! Good job! One piece of feedback: I'd consider a different sound effect or melody for your title card. The current one sounds harsh, especially on headphones.
Hi thanks for the feedback its a spectrum loading sound so fits with the channel name but dont worry I dont use it all the time as people have already said the same but some vids are already done but future ones dont have it
The complexities of the SNES colour palettes is real. But I learned something. In mode 0, the background tiles can be only 4 colours each (although this might actually be 3, depending if the alpha index can be made not transparent). So if there are 32 colours per layer, that means there are eight 2bit/4 colour palettes shared for the background layers. No games are going to display anything much over 128 colours just purely because with a 15 colour limit per sprite or tile, the opportunity to increase the colour count is more or less hamstrung by the limitation of requiring one of the 8 palettes available to your layer more or less share similar tones for any given scene or character, as 8 palettes are available to the sprite layer and 8 to the background layers.
It is just so wild to invest in this. Phillips CDi already had direct color without limits. Jaguar and 32x did mostly away with palettes. SNES is a dead end. Last of the 2d consoles.
@@ArneChristianRosenfeldt the SNES was the last console to use hardware sprite and tile based graphics. Although the design of the SNES actually took place _before_ the design of the Mega Drive, making the Sega machine the last sprite/tile based machine. The PSX and Saturn both have sprite capabilities but there is no longer indexed colour or limits on size. Tile engines are so efficient. The speeds the Mega Drive could handle in 2D scenes is still rarely matched in a modern 2D game. Because the hardware was so specific to moving tiles and the whole system was carefully tuned. The NeoGeo is sprites but no tiles. What tiles are, is a background layer with all elements moving in parallel. Again, a cost saving measure that is practical as background tiles don't need to move independently. That's why 3D games don't work too well on a tile based console. A direct colour display (useless on the SNES due to hardware limits) is better for 3D as new tiles aren't needing to be generated by the cpu, then copied into the vram with lots of squares contain bit's of 3D geometry that are then discarded and generated again in realtime. Slowly. The 32X has a beefy dual cpu design with 2 23Mhz sh2's. The Cdi (1991) has a 15.5Mhz 68070 which no doubt does well at moving the graphics into vram from what I assume is a fairly powerful gpu. Although making a 2D game move fast on the CDi, I think was a challenge, although that just might not have been the kind of game the publishers were pushing. So tile engines weren't strictly neccassary in 1991. But the SNES needed to be released before the machine became obsolete. And it enjoyed almost 4 years of relevancy, despite not really being fit for purpose as programmers struggled to achieve reasonable frame rates.
I've researched Sega hardware for about the past 5 years and I found no issue in their design methodology, despite the protestations of 'general consensus' / the google ai results. For instance, suggested result 'Sega 32X' 'Why did the 32X fail' from the wiki article it states "...inability to function without an attached Genesis and lack of a CD drive" This is an answer. But if you are really analysing the markets carefully around that time it seems incongruent to assume such a conclusion as reasonable. This obviously points towards social engineering. Which is where my research simply got too scary and I needed to go and shiver under my blankets for a bit.
@@ArneChristianRosenfeldt 2D is not a dead end though. My background in graphic design and IT (original, I know) gives me this insight. The 3D engine is pointless because it only adds immersion. Immersion is at odds with gameplay. a 3d scene requires exponentially more processing power, but there's more. The limitations of the viewpoint are a constant issue. I watched Bayonetta and was impressed with the direction of the game to control the camera viewpoint for you in many instances. This is something in-between directing a move and a game and really there's only a few studios rich and sophisticated enough to ahcieve this.
But it's false to say 3D uses more processing. That doesn't make sense as a statement. But the complete ditching of 2D engines died out by the time of the PS2 and DC, which offered no (unscalable) graphic assets, but simple flat textured polygon's work fine, no probs. But the quality of the image is not considered. This is why PSX games like Rayman and Oddworld topped the UK charts, where the PSX 3D capabilities fell flat. These are still reactively simple 2D scenes but full of colour and animation. Symphony of the Night, I'm told used technical programming to achieve the colour counts. The PSX is a 2D machine, primarily, with a 3D function augmented into it a bit later in the process with an area of fast vram and geometry and lighting engine included. For 3D gaming, the Saturn seems to better choice with it's superior lineup of 3D software and 3D capabilities. But the advanced 2D abilities of the Saturn were a real use to 2D game design, offloading many effects into VDP2, which does more than backgrounds. There are other considerations that amount to a good scene. Modern games suffer from microstuttering and frame drops, despite the powerful hardware, greatly antagonised by abstracted memory controllers and microcode you are not usually authorised to access and is highly complex. The Sega design philosophy is to prioritise frame rate and degrade the graphics until the scene is smooth. The achievement of a smooth scene takes a very keen eye and a depth of knowledge to achieve and with shoddy Nintendo or Sony hardware is an uphill struggle. The design of you hardware is greatly benefitted by a deep insight into the final application of your system and if your hardware department are not well versed with the demands, then you might simply have to rely on 3rd parties like Ricoh, Toshiba or SGI to finalise your design across two different companies or use the Intel bridge memory architecture to add power, at the detriment of accessibility to the system for the devs.
So many great games on the SNES. Glad I grew up playing it. Super Mario World, Super Punch-Out!!, Donkey Kong Country, Super Mario RPG, Secret of Mana, Contra III and so much more!
Sega Genesis or MegaDrive use general purpose cpu where the developer programming skill put to the test in order to create effects that similar to what SNES can do. For example mode 7, while devs could literally flip a switch from the available mode preset on Snes DevKit, Sega devs need to calculate complex math to put reference table in order to make 68k cpu on genesis could process the data without sacrifice important cycles for other process. Both are awesome in their own way, like SNES when devs utilise the capability of base hardware in term of color and sound like in DK country ,it will looks almost like early 32 bit hardware could do. Or how Panorama Cotton could display effect thay looks like mode 7 and scaling only on the base genesis hardware
mode 0 can be seen in : monopoly (japan) 1 & 2 , in game mode some parts of S.O.S. (boiler room) It's much like how the nes works since it's almost all (except sprites and color math) in 2bpp .
I like some sega games but pretty much all sega games are boring within a couple minutes. The snes games are very fun even today. Thats why i like nintendo better
The Genesis could do things with just the 68000 and the fast DMA (aka blast processing) that the SNES needed help from the PPU or an enhancement chip to achieve.
A lot of the big snes games had enhancement chips in the carts. I had both consoles, loved both but for several genres of games the megadrive kicked the snes' arse despite being a few years older.
So, where did you hire Darth Vader’s high strung British cousin to narrate? But seriously, please, PLEASE learn to breathe in at more standard intervals and without sharply sucking right into the microphone. Everything else was well done, but the ear piercing breathe ins killed me.
The most retro thing about this video is the 40 year-olds in the comments reciting console war talking points from their youth.
Very informative video. I was one of those guys that lived and breathed video games and gaming magazines back in those days and i still learned a ton.
Glad you enjoyed it
Snes was such a cool console, recall being amazed the first time i saw one running.
Definitely worth watching again mate.
Yeah and it was quite complicated for the time too
I miss this era where hardware from each of the major console makers was sufficiently bespoke and implemented in unique ways that one could easily tell what was a TG16, a Genesis/MD or a SNES/SFC. Same for the audio. Nowadays I challenge anyone to determine if a screen grab from a multiplatform game is from a PS5 or an Xbox Series X (Series S is easier to detect but between the two full-fat consoles, its very difficult to tell them apart).
PS: Could I make a request for a video on the C64?
I will add C64 to the list thanks for watching
I’m pretty sure devs don’t miss needing to learn hardware specific techniques and assembly languages
@@youngwt1 Oh good God no! I still have ptsd from trying to create sprites for my c64. It was like sudoku from hell.
In Mario Kart, the trick isn't interlaced mode. It's the big black separator bar between images. It's there to give the game time to set up the second view. They're the same image, after all.
It depends on which trick you mean, there is the two player split screen, the map on single player or switching modes for the skyline
@Retro48K526 the split screen two player mode and the rear view mirror,I believe lifetime, are done by changing the coordinates of the view port during hdma. So it renders the first player perspective, then it just switches to the second players location and renders from that perspective. They give themselves time to make those changes during the black space between the two renders.
@@MrBillgonzoso VRAM was too small for the complete track? 128x128 tiles not enough?
I just watched you SNES and Genesis/Mega Drive videos back-to-back. Both are excellent, however I do wish you touched on the SNES’ Sony sound chip, which gave the SNES such a distinct sound versus the competition.
Also, I would love to see more on this generation of gaming, like the PC Engine/Turbo GraFX-16 and the Neo Geo, if you were so inclined. A few handheld videos would also be welcome (GameBoy Advance and how it compares to the SNES, the Game Gear, Lynx, Virtual Boy…).
New Subscriber. I love your channel so far and so can’t wait to dive deeper! Thank you for your hard work!
❤❤❤❤❤❤❤
Hi turbo graphics will be out shortly its already recorded and edited and scheduled in thanks for the sub
@ you do really nice work. Thank you!
Yup +1 for the sound chip.
Cool video! Good job! One piece of feedback: I'd consider a different sound effect or melody for your title card. The current one sounds harsh, especially on headphones.
Hi thanks for the feedback its a spectrum loading sound so fits with the channel name but dont worry I dont use it all the time as people have already said the same but some vids are already done but future ones dont have it
The complexities of the SNES colour palettes is real. But I learned something. In mode 0, the background tiles can be only 4 colours each (although this might actually be 3, depending if the alpha index can be made not transparent). So if there are 32 colours per layer, that means there are eight 2bit/4 colour palettes shared for the background layers.
No games are going to display anything much over 128 colours just purely because with a 15 colour limit per sprite or tile, the opportunity to increase the colour count is more or less hamstrung by the limitation of requiring one of the 8 palettes available to your layer more or less share similar tones for any given scene or character, as 8 palettes are available to the sprite layer and 8 to the background layers.
It is just so wild to invest in this. Phillips CDi already had direct color without limits. Jaguar and 32x did mostly away with palettes. SNES is a dead end. Last of the 2d consoles.
@@ArneChristianRosenfeldt the SNES was the last console to use hardware sprite and tile based graphics.
Although the design of the SNES actually took place _before_ the design of the Mega Drive, making the Sega machine the last sprite/tile based machine.
The PSX and Saturn both have sprite capabilities but there is no longer indexed colour or limits on size.
Tile engines are so efficient. The speeds the Mega Drive could handle in 2D scenes is still rarely matched in a modern 2D game.
Because the hardware was so specific to moving tiles and the whole system was carefully tuned.
The NeoGeo is sprites but no tiles. What tiles are, is a background layer with all elements moving in parallel. Again, a cost saving measure that is practical as background tiles don't need to move independently.
That's why 3D games don't work too well on a tile based console.
A direct colour display (useless on the SNES due to hardware limits) is better for 3D as new tiles aren't needing to be generated by the cpu, then copied into the vram with lots of squares contain bit's of 3D geometry that are then discarded and generated again in realtime. Slowly.
The 32X has a beefy dual cpu design with 2 23Mhz sh2's. The Cdi (1991) has a 15.5Mhz 68070 which no doubt does well at moving the graphics into vram from what I assume is a fairly powerful gpu. Although making a 2D game move fast on the CDi, I think was a challenge, although that just might not have been the kind of game the publishers were pushing.
So tile engines weren't strictly neccassary in 1991. But the SNES needed to be released before the machine became obsolete. And it enjoyed almost 4 years of relevancy, despite not really being fit for purpose as programmers struggled to achieve reasonable frame rates.
I've researched Sega hardware for about the past 5 years and I found no issue in their design methodology, despite the protestations of 'general consensus' / the google ai results.
For instance, suggested result 'Sega 32X' 'Why did the 32X fail' from the wiki article it states "...inability to function without an attached Genesis and lack of a CD drive"
This is an answer. But if you are really analysing the markets carefully around that time it seems incongruent to assume such a conclusion as reasonable.
This obviously points towards social engineering. Which is where my research simply got too scary and I needed to go and shiver under my blankets for a bit.
@@ArneChristianRosenfeldt 2D is not a dead end though. My background in graphic design and IT (original, I know) gives me this insight.
The 3D engine is pointless because it only adds immersion. Immersion is at odds with gameplay.
a 3d scene requires exponentially more processing power, but there's more. The limitations of the viewpoint are a constant issue.
I watched Bayonetta and was impressed with the direction of the game to control the camera viewpoint for you in many instances.
This is something in-between directing a move and a game and really there's only a few studios rich and sophisticated enough to ahcieve this.
But it's false to say 3D uses more processing. That doesn't make sense as a statement. But the complete ditching of 2D engines died out by the time of the PS2 and DC, which offered no (unscalable) graphic assets, but simple flat textured polygon's work fine, no probs.
But the quality of the image is not considered. This is why PSX games like Rayman and Oddworld topped the UK charts, where the PSX 3D capabilities fell flat.
These are still reactively simple 2D scenes but full of colour and animation. Symphony of the Night, I'm told used technical programming to achieve the colour counts.
The PSX is a 2D machine, primarily, with a 3D function augmented into it a bit later in the process with an area of fast vram and geometry and lighting engine included.
For 3D gaming, the Saturn seems to better choice with it's superior lineup of 3D software and 3D capabilities.
But the advanced 2D abilities of the Saturn were a real use to 2D game design, offloading many effects into VDP2, which does more than backgrounds.
There are other considerations that amount to a good scene. Modern games suffer from microstuttering and frame drops, despite the powerful hardware, greatly antagonised by abstracted memory controllers and microcode you are not usually authorised to access and is highly complex.
The Sega design philosophy is to prioritise frame rate and degrade the graphics until the scene is smooth. The achievement of a smooth scene takes a very keen eye and a depth of knowledge to achieve and with shoddy Nintendo or Sony hardware is an uphill struggle.
The design of you hardware is greatly benefitted by a deep insight into the final application of your system and if your hardware department are not well versed with the demands, then you might simply have to rely on 3rd parties like Ricoh, Toshiba or SGI to finalise your design across two different companies or use the Intel bridge memory architecture to add power, at the detriment of accessibility to the system for the devs.
So many great games on the SNES. Glad I grew up playing it. Super Mario World, Super Punch-Out!!, Donkey Kong Country, Super Mario RPG, Secret of Mana, Contra III and so much more!
Sega Genesis or MegaDrive use general purpose cpu where the developer programming skill put to the test in order to create effects that similar to what SNES can do. For example mode 7, while devs could literally flip a switch from the available mode preset on Snes DevKit, Sega devs need to calculate complex math to put reference table in order to make 68k cpu on genesis could process the data without sacrifice important cycles for other process.
Both are awesome in their own way, like SNES when devs utilise the capability of base hardware in term of color and sound like in DK country ,it will looks almost like early 32 bit hardware could do.
Or how Panorama Cotton could display effect thay looks like mode 7 and scaling only on the base genesis hardware
mode 0 can be seen in : monopoly (japan) 1 & 2 , in game mode
some parts of S.O.S. (boiler room)
It's much like how the nes works since it's almost all (except sprites and color math) in 2bpp .
It really did put the "super" into Nintendo.
I like some sega games but pretty much all sega games are boring within a couple minutes. The snes games are very fun even today. Thats why i like nintendo better
Cool video dude...
Glad you liked it
What mode did Star Fox used?
Please, can you get rid of this starting noise in future videos?
Haha its not in them all
Super Nintendo Chalmers
The SNES might have had 7 modes, but it didn't have Blast Processing 🤔 😂
Its doesn’t need it, it has F-Zero 😂😂
@Retro48K526 🤣
@Retro48K526 Oh yeah, that franchise Nintendo has binned 😉🤣
SNES has Colour Blasting. I even made an article on it myself. Look it up "What is Colour Blasting on SNES? - iNCEPTIONAL". ;-)
@@GenerationPixel How many franchises did Sega bin from the Genesis era?
In fact, how is Sega doing in the console space these days?
"The SNES was Nintendo's 16 bit console and its often thought of as less powerful than Sega's offering" - only by Sega fanboys
Or people that only look at the CPU speed
I mean comparing games like Sonic the hedgehog 3 and Super Mario World they look on par
The Genesis could do things with just the 68000 and the fast DMA (aka blast processing) that the SNES needed help from the PPU or an enhancement chip to achieve.
@scpnoobers so, a game from 1990 vs a game from 1994
A lot of the big snes games had enhancement chips in the carts. I had both consoles, loved both but for several genres of games the megadrive kicked the snes' arse despite being a few years older.
So, where did you hire Darth Vader’s high strung British cousin to narrate?
But seriously, please, PLEASE learn to breathe in at more standard intervals and without sharply sucking right into the microphone. Everything else was well done, but the ear piercing breathe ins killed me.