Think The NES Can't Handle Mode 7? Think Again

It looks great and it would be nice to see that in a full game. But it's not mode 7, as you made clearer in the text below the video. Anyway, these tricks always seem more impressive when did on stock hardware or using mappers that were available on the console's era.

Some people really don't understand what Mode 7 is, do they.

There's a reason the developer put "Mode 7" in the air quotes.

That's not Mode 7, but rather a cool raster effect that simply works on each scanline. It's the same effect seen in some of the stages of the shmup Axelay on SNES, which is not using Mode 7 either. Still looks impressive though, especially when you see it on an 8-bit system like the NES.

So, yeah, it looks very cool here, but it's not Mode 7.

There's a reason real Mode 7 was such a huge deal back in the day.

@RetroGames in the replies to the quoted tweet the developer says this is "fake HDMA" which is one aspect of Mode 7. They also imply the could get it to rotate but they don't need it for their game.

https://twitter.com/somethinnerdy/status/1845882805529858176

@damo "As noted by the developer, this wouldn't be possible without the unique mappers it has developed."

In fact they say the opposite, they could have done it without the mapper, but it wouldn't have been as efficient or neat: https://twitter.com/somethinnerdy/status/1846038217092448765

A lot of older system could find ways to do pseudo mode 7 style effects even the Mega Drive it just takes a lot more rom space to program it all in and doing anything like that in software is a much slower process and takes more CPU power to pull it off often coming across slow in comparison. It does look good though and it's good to see new developers trying new stuff like this on old systems.

It has to have been a decade ago I've seen someone do a NES tech demo of "the Axelay effect". Possibly there was even a ROM release. Solely a graphics demo, no actual gameplay.

@gingerbeardman Well, technically Mode 7 is actually just about background rotation and scaling [and shearing] only, and HDMA is actually its own thing entirely that's about allowing the SNES to do various tricks on a per-scanline basis like offsetting the horizontal position/scroll of the background or changing the backdrop colour or switching background modes or changing the left and right values of the two windows/masks, etc. But, in many cases you'd see the two combined on SNES to create the overall sense of something being on some 3D perspective surface, like you see in F-Zero and so on, and that's typically how most people think of Mode 7. So there is a half truth there from a casual perspective. That's why the developer better refers to this as "fake HDMA", as that's what it really is more akin to.

I did mode 7 on my toaster once

@KingMike Are you're thinking of the tech demo Upsilandre did in 2019? (no special mapper)
https://upsilandre.over-blog.com/2019/07/les-arcanes-du-scrolling-vertical.html
https://x.com/upsilandre/status/1110517612574883840

(I did a Game Boy / Color riff on that a few years later)
https://x.com/0xbbbbbr/status/1483344056243552256

Upsilandre has a good follow up article on the Axelay effect vs Mode 7 too
https://upsilandre.over-blog.com/2023/02/axelay-et-le-mode-7.html

Very impressive, would be great to see a new shmup on Nes utilising this tech.

@bbbbbr Yeah, that third link shows some cool examples of this effect being used, especially the version of Axelay done on the SuperGrafx that has two overlapping scrolling backgrounds with the effect [plus a large boss done with sprites too]:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CutMY8MOGRE

It's also worth pointing out that the SNES can actually have three layers with an effect like this on the backgrounds if desired [plus a large enemy done with sprites too]:

https://youtu.be/5CFd7qc_EjY?t=3404

The shadow there is done with the third lower-colour layer that's available on SNES.

And, actually, the SNES could in fact do this with four backgrounds [plus a large enemy done with sprites] if someone wanted to really go all out, which would be possible by using Mode 0, but no one has ever tried that. So there's a moonshot for some future aspiring SNES developer....

Is it Mode 7, or is it that wrapping feature that Mickey Mania did on the Mega Drive?

(Also Nebulus, and Battletoads on the tower stage on the NES)

@Guru_Larry Not sure what Mickey feature you're talking about, but, no, it's not Mode 7.

@RetroGames that's what I said, but in far fewer words

@gingerbeardman Indeed.

@Axelay71 Already happened on NES. And it does a lot more than what this article is showing off. It's quite impressive (not the warping part, but over all performance part).

People need to stop calling this "fake HDMA". It's literally just traditional tried and true "interrupts".. and that's how it was done before the SNES decided to use a more efficient way of hsync register updates.

@RetroGames There were a couple of pseudo "mode 7" effect on the Genesis, and the YouTube channel GameHut/Coding Secrets has breakdown of them. I think Larry was referring to this effect in the infinite chase scene, which was really a palette switching trick.

https://youtu.be/C9A6K5RQ2JQ

Another mode 7-ish effect is the rotating ship in Puggsy. In this case the Genesis is able to scroll individual strips vertical strips instead of the whole BG layer. Mode 7 it ain't, but it approximates rotation pretty convincingly for small rotation angles.

https://youtu.be/Q5iqSzKYZoQ

@nitro2k01 Yeah, there's always ways to approximate something. But the real deal is the real deal, and I think most people can usually see the difference, be it in resolution, frame rates, smoothness of the rotation and scaling, the full screen effect, etc.

Interestingly, all of those other ways of faking Mode 7 can be used on SNES too. The unfinished port of Puggsy on SNES actually used the same faux rotating technique as on Genesis, and it was actually slightly smoother on SNES due to the system having higher fidelity column scrolling (columns are 8 pixels wide on SNES vs 16 pixels wide on Genesis):

https://youtu.be/Pvn5mAqisaU?t=1450

But it's still particularly cool when you see a system like the NES pulling off even something somewhat similar to these 16-bit systems with fake Mode 7 and fake HDMA effects and such be honest.

@RetroGames I said it's not mode 7, the moose chase scene, and the tower ascention.

@Guru_Larry Yes, correct, those are not Mode 7. They do look cool though.