RetroGames

@RejectedAng3L You realise that Yoshi's Island, one of the greatest platform games of all time, used the FX[2] chip, right?

Also, when you said the Dreamcast and PS1 left the N64 in the dust, I presume you meant Saturn there?

Now, assuming you did mean the Saturn, there's multiple ways the N64 left the Saturn in the dust too. Saturn almost certainly could not pull off a game like Wave Rave for example. And there's a few ways the N64 beat the PS1 too. But, overall, I think the Saturn was a superior 2D system and the PS1 a better rounded 3D system overall. The N64 was certainly extremely capable though, and it gave us some of the most groundbreaking and greatest games ever made up to that point, with multiple control innovations that both those other systems copied very quickly indeed.

You sound like you're being sarcastic and facetious with that article title, but it really does need to be stated explicitly as often as possible imo, so people really do start to get the message that actual ownership of the things they buy is slowly but surely being taken away from them. If people don't take this seriously and start to properly fight back against it asap, it will at some point be too late. We deserve to own those things we pay for where it would just make common sense to most people in thinking that they already did own them upon purchase.

@Deuteros Hearing you on that.

I'd personally rather people just made actual new games for these systems, especially the SNES, rather than all this random extremely niche stuff that isn't going to impact 99.99% of the people still interested in these consoles today, but it's cool that it's something for the real hardcore types to have the option of if so desired. And, of course, I guess there are a few new Game Boy games still getting made by fans, so those are all presumably playable on the SNES this way too, which is a nice little bonus for SNES fans. Ultimately, despite my personal wants, which is just many more new indie/homebrew SNES titles, it's a great thing that people are still working on anything to do with these old systems, so this is all good really.

Can't really disagree with the artist personally to be honest. I just think this lacks all the visual charm of the original 2D games. And not because it's 3D, but because it's totally charmless 3D.

I might be interested in getting a Tamagotchi for a bit of fun if it had a little colour screen, even just as simple as say the Game Boy Color.

Some interesting stuff developing there.

And these guys have also said they're going to support the new "FX3" chip that's being used on the upcoming SNES Doom Definitive Edition as well, so that's very interesting and exciting too.

I wonder if they'll support the new SNES controller that has rumble support that was made in conjunction with Doom Definitive Edition on this Star Fox stuff also--anyone heard anything on that?

This honestly just sounds terrible to me. I hate all this sponsorship crap shoving random totally out of place celebrities and corporate mascots and other "in" things of the moment into games. It's why I just cannot bring myself to actually play Fortnite. I mean, I tried it and it actually plays pretty well, but I just cannot actually play it beyond that. The inclusion of Ronaldo in this fighting game has just lowered any respect I might have had for it at a serious property.

Personal taste, but I'd say ActRaiser's soundtrack is his best work. And the main theme to Streets of Rage 1/2 is up there as well. Those two are him peak imo. This sounds good too though. At moments I think it's got a bit of that ActRaiser vibe to it actually, but if it were done through a '90s synthesiser rather than with real instruments. Well, at least the tracks as they sound in the linked YouTube OST video anyway.

OK, but these game are really beyond NES visuals and capabilities in quite a few ways. It's similar to Shovel Knight, which in some ways looked like NES, mostly in terms of colours, but really was far beyond what NES was capable of. They're more like a suped-up NES, maybe some kind of imaginary 12-bit system or something. They all look really cool though. Would kinda love to see these guys make something for SNES like this and actually release it as a real physical cartridge for the system.

I'm sure a handful of people will give this a try.

@PopetheRev28 Very true. Not quite as great as those games in a few key ways imo, but a solid title in its own right. There's a few ways I do wish it was a bit more polished and took better advantage of the SNES though. But it is what it is. It was about as close to getting Shinobi for SNES as it got. A very good game that's more than worthy of giving a go for any retro SNES gamers out there.

If you add SNES support, you'll get my support.

@KingMike Yeah, tell me about it. I've faced these issues multiple times with the various games I've both successfully made and the ones I've never finished in my time. The never static nature of modern development environments and all the software development kits and so on is a real personal nightmare for me to be honest.

@Sketcz Yeah, I got the sense he thinks there's pretty much nothing of worth to actually show there. He might be right if it's all too programmery and obscure for the target readers here to appreciate it it. But I'd say if there was anything moving around on the screen at all, which seems to be the case, and it wasn't all just using terrible coder placeholder art or something that just does more harm than good in terms of conveying what's going on and would just make everyone jump to strange conclusions, it would probably still be cool to see.

Is there a way this guy can compile his tech demo at least and share it with you guys or whomever just so we can see even that early test?

Even just some pictures or a bit of footage of it running would be something.

I love seeing stuff like this for SNES. And sometimes it even shows off some cool graphical tricks and approaches that I think can benefit the modern indie/homebrew dev scene. like, the bit where he mentions splitting the screen and using Mode 7 and animating the full background by updating lots of tiles, etc, all sounds very interesting to me.

Definitely worth pushing a little harder to see if you can get something there imo.

@Daniel36 Yes, but not for SNES.

I was working on an fps game called Disasteroid by a company named Second Skin Media back in the day that never saw the light of day. Both the game and company have kinda disappeared off the face of the Earth now. It was during the PS2/Xbox/GC era, and it was pretty cool because it had this unique mechanic where you could dynamically react to sound cues in the environment and it would automatically turn your view towards the sound, which sometimes resulted in some jump scare of some creature whizzing past in the shadows for example. It was a bit of a horror game. And I like to joke that it was a game about a "Disaster on an Asteroid" when describing it, like the name wasn't totally on the nose. Lol But it was; it was a game about prisoners stuck in a prison that was located on an asteroid, and then some kind of alien creature had invaded it and you were one of the guards trying to make your way through it and survive the ordeal, with both the alien creature and the violent prisoners coming after you. Genuinely, it had a very Alien Isolation vibe to it.

Interestingly, I actually also created a design document for a GBA version of the game too. Kinda thinking of how a SNES version of that might have played out now. . . .

Shame they never actually made this a thing, as I would have liked to have seen and played such a SNES game.

In fact, I'd be happy to see all unfinished and unreleased SNES games finished and released. I especially wish RARE would just fully complete and release the apparently 99% complete SNES version of Killer Instinct 2 already for example. I mean, seriously, how hard would that be. And, with the excitement and enthusiasm around the recently announced official SNES Doom Definitive Edition that comes with a brand new "FX3" chip inside and also support for a similarly brand new SNES controller with built-in rumble support, I imagine a release of Killer Instinct 2 for SNES today would be a big deal. It could even add support for that SNES rumble controller now too.

There's surely a whole lot of cool stuff there that SNES fans could be appreciating and enjoying.

Any "game researcher" saying that isn't really worth listening to imo, as they clearly haven't done any real research on the history and development of this game at all. Never mind also considering the original Street Fighter that factors into this too.

It's real simple: Japan and America were by far the largest gaming markets in the world at the time of the original Street Fighters' creation, and the developers patently just wanted to put in a couple of characters that appealed to their two biggest demographics. Nintendo literally used to list console sales as Japan, America (I think North America), and "other", which should tell you all you need to know there. So, they originally put a Japanese guy as the lead, which make total sense given the developers were probably all Japanese, and they put an American as the second/alternative player choice basically. That's it. Ain't no rocket science.

And with Street Fighter II it was simply a case of the Japanese game creators wanting a varied range of characters from around the world that fit literally into the title of "World Warrior", as the game is about fighters trying to prove themselves as the best out there, so they put in a Japanese dude, an American dude, an Indian dude, a Brazillion thing from the forest , etc, and represented a few popular martial arts and fighting styles of the era as well, like sumo, karate, kickboxing, ninjutsu, boxing, etc. This is why later games expanded the roster to include a Jamaican dude, a British female, a Chinese Bruce Lee ripoff, a Mexican Native American dude, etc.

It's not about "Japan vs America" in any sense other than it's literally a Japanese dude fighting and American dude if you pick the characters from those two countries imo.

Also, Damien, come one, get off the high horse with crap like " it was made in the '90s, and having an Indian yogi with shrunken skulls around his neck was almost acceptable back then."

No one was even remotely calling out stuff like this back in the day as some kind of "problem", as every normal sane person knew fine well there was no harm or foul intended and indeed that such designs simply make these characters more interesting and cartoonish rather than realistic and boring. And trying to rewrite history on such things to make them seem, I dunno, racist or whatever, is just a very bad look for any supposed "professional" journalist here imo.

Christ, can you imagine how utterly boring a realistic portrayal of some yoga master would be in a fighting game if the creators couldn't use a bit of imagination and stretch the truth a little for the sake of creating fun fighters. . . .

No one was ever remotely harmed by someone drawing some pretend Indian martial arts video game character with some shrunken skulls around their neck. Dude clearly got those from kicking ass and boiling his opponents . . . no, wait, that would probably be a Mortal Kombat fatality or something. The character designer probably just used Temple of Doom as some reference there or whatever. It's just a fun movie-style/cartoon-style caricature and characterisation and such.

The character designs were never a problem in the first place, and they're not one now. And anyone trying to make it some retroactive problem really needs to grow up and find some real problems in the world to virtue signal about and go rally over imo. Ideally on a site that's not about video games.

I expect this one will have lovely art examples.

It all looks too zoomed out most of the time imo.

Annoyingly, pretty much all of those colours are just a little off for me in terms of the hues and shades they went with. It's frustrating as hell when I see console creators do that. Because even with all those options, none are ones I would actually want. This kind of stuff is not rocket science. It's not that hard to get it right with a set of more universally appealing core colours.

I thought it meant actual semi-transparency when I read the subtitle of the article. And that would have been really cool to see. But those walls just looks dithered.

I mean, to be fair, I'm not sure what other name you could have used to describe them. But maybe adding the word "dithered" in there might have helped to just make things clear up front.

This is probably why it wasn't widely advertised when the Saturn version originally came out, because the PlayStation version had actual semi-transparent walls normally in some levels as I recall, and I guess it would not have looked great if the cheat for the Saturn version gave you something that wasn't up to technical par there.

The lack of proper semi-transparency in Sega consoles and add-ons from the Genesis to Saturn and everything in between has always annoyed me. And, yes, I know the Saturn could actually do proper semi-transparency, but not that many games actually used it and instead went with the dithering that just looks noticeably worse, and that's my point.

So, basically, this revelation didn't leave me with a smile on my face.

@Max_the_German I see what you did there. Lol

In this case, I don't really think changing some of those names makes any meaningful difference to the experience, not to me at least, but I have no problems with both versions now existing for people to choose the one that makes most sense to them. So it's a win win really. It's really not the most interesting or exciting of the literally thousands of SNES patches that have been created and are still being created for you to pick as the one to make an article on mind you.

They spent a lot of time on it, so hopefully it delivers.

There's just way too many different handheld systems coming out these days imo, especially retro-focused ones.

Well, not from Atari.

Seems like as good a way to learn as any.

Oof! That must have smarted.

@RupeeClock Yeah, that Logan guy comes across as a bit of a plonker to me. But I honestly don't care about him, just the end product. Hopefully it's as good as it all appears to be. So far, I'm pretty confident Palmer is going to deliver where it counts.

@RupeeClock Ah, okay. So it's just a bunch of celebs or whomever that have had their hands on it thus far.

@RupeeClock Haven't they already done that?

Happy to see they'll be doing a GBA system at some point. I loved my GBA SP with a passion.

But I'm rooting most highly for a SNES system from these guys next above all. And doubly so because it means they'll likely want to launch it with some proper brand new SNES titles as well, which I think would be great and might just spur on the SNES homebrew scene a bit more too.

Of all the beloved retro [home] consoles, I actually think the SNES is getting the least love at this time compared to its relative popularity at the time it was around originally, and I'd like to see that imbalance addressed in modern times. If Palmer gets involved, I expect he could do something really great there. But I think he's possibly actually a bigger Genesis fan, which doesn't bode well for what I'm after with SNES. If I'm wrong and he actually prefers the SNES though, well that could be potentially great if he decides to do something on that front.

And I don't say that because I don't like the Genesis or wish great support for it too, but because of that huge imbalance with all these retro consoles in modern times as I see it, specifically the lack of relative support for the SNES compared to most of the other historically less popular systems that are actually seeing pretty great homebrew support right now.

The SNES homebrew scene is just starting to see some signs of life, and the recent reveal of the official physical release of SNES Doom Definitive Edition with a new "FX3" chip alongside a new rumble controller, as well as the announcement that "SNESmaker" support is getting added to NESmaker, might help there in a potentially big way in the future, but SNES still deserves a lot more homebrew love than it's currently getting imo.

There ain't enough clear images of the content to give me an idea if I'm actually interested in this or not. The art is a side thing. I want to see what a few more pages of actual content look like properly and clearly.

That's a pretty interesting idea there. And, since almost everyone has a case on their phone anyway, it's one of the few solutions that actually makes a lot of sense. Now it's just a matter of doing it right.

@KingMike Similarly, I would love to see a whole bunch of Genesis games ported to SNES, the big hitters:

Sonic the Hedgehog 1 (don't care about the rest)
Streets of Rage 1 and 2 (don't care about 3)
Golden Axe 1 (not really bothered about the rest)
Alien Storm
Thunder Force IV
Virtua Racing (just to see how close the FX2 or now "FX3" could get)
Alien Soldier
Ghouls 'n Ghosts
Aladdin
The Adventures of Batman & Robin
Splatterhouse 2
Contra: Hard Corps
Gunstar Heroes
M.U.S.H.A
Mercs
Super Fantasy Zone
Castle of Illusion
Revenge of Shinobi and Shinobi III
Comix Zone
Dynamite Headdy
Castlevania: Bloodlines

And I would ideally like them to take further advantage of the SNES' features with these ports and add in more colours, proper transparency, more background layers, maybe use some nice Mode 7 rotation and scaling in some choice places, ideally add surround sound support, and take extra advantage of the SNES' controller in some cases.

Anytime anyone wants to gets started on that list, that would be great.

OK. Now, along with that, can you somehow magically figure out how to get "RARE" to let you finish and announce a physical SNES cartridge and a modern digital release of the basically complete Killer Instinct 2 for SNES, please. RARE, Microsoft, Stampers, are you there.... No one can convince me this wouldn't be awesome and indeed turn in nice little profit. I guarantee SNES fans would absolutely lap this up.

Would be cool to have this in the collection too. Still, it will surely be part of the Satellaview revival thing at some point, so that's cool.

@X68000 Well, it will be interesting to see how this develops.

@MegaManFan The guy is doing great work on SNES for sure. And although many people still don't quite get it, he's laying a great foundation for so many potential "All-Stars" versions of these great NES games on SNES at some point in the future should the community decides that's something they want.

@YANDMAN I thought that it was going to become Retro Game Forge going forward, with I guess NESmaker just being the legacy version for people who already own that, no?

@GravyThief I wonder if the community will take advantage of the "FX3" for stuff like this once that comes out with the recently announced official release of Doom Definitive Edition for SNES. That would be pretty cool to see.

I just went to the Game On exhibition in the National Museum of Scotland, and it was very cool seeing a bunch of these old systems and being able to play games on them old style. It wasn't ideal due the systems clearly not being in the best state and such, with some that were even already broken and waiting for repair or just stuck on some screen you couldn't move past and so on. And they bizarrely didn't have all the most important Mario platformers like Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 3, Super Mario World, or any of the Super Mario Galaxy games on display, despite Mario being used on all their main promotional banners and stuff. So, really, I figured they were going to have a proper section fully dedicated to Mario with all his best moments on show and available to play. They had Super Mario Bros. 2 and Super Mario 64, which was okay and all, but it just seemed like the least possible they could have done there. Still, it was just kinda cool playing around 100 games on old consoles, handhelds, PC, arcades, etc. I was impressed with how well games like Pong, Asteroids, and Pac Man actually played when playing them on the proper original hardware with their original controls and such. They just felt so responsive and like that was exactly the way there were supposed to be enjoyed. I kid you not when I say there was a moment there where I nearly cried at the tangibleness of playing games like this and the understanding we're slowing losing that in gaming. They even had at least one spectrum game too, Manic Miner. Also, it actually felt much like being in a proper '80s-'90s arcade again, albeit a slightly run down one, which was kinda cool. A fun little hour or two.

@UtopiaNemo I'd love to see more homebrew games for SNES too alongside the Genesis.

Yeah, I think right now the Genesis has much better development tools and is also just much easier to work with in general because of its simpler internal design, only one background mode on Genesis where you can use all its tricks vs a very convoluted eight to choose from on SNES that each have different special features for example, which I think has really helped there.

It will be interesting to see what the homebrew scene is like for each system in a few years from now, especially as the various tools continue to develop and also now that it seems the SNES is about to get its first proper development tool that actual laymen can use too (the "SNESmaker" part of NESmaker's new Retro Game Forge).

I'm hoping both systems have a very healthy and exciting future ahead in that regard.

@Daggot Dunno, but there's games on SNES and even NES that move just as fast as Sonic the Hedgehog on Genesis, including a fan demo of the first level of Sonic the Hedgehog on SNES, so I don't think Sonic moving fast was truly some special or unique technical achievement so much as it was just impressive to see him running around like that at that time.

It was impressive though, right, and certainly something Sega's marketing team fully leaned into.

But the DMA stuff is mostly useful for switching in some more new tiles and such slightly faster basically, as far as I understand it, which can be useful if you have very large animated characters or lots of characters that you want to animate separately and want to avoid using forced blank (the black bars you sometimes see at the top and bottom of the screen in some games, more often on SNES than Genesis).

Another way you can do that is by using smaller memory tiles, where you use less colours per tile, if you have such an option as a built-in feature. Standard 2bpp NES tiles take up half the memory space of standard 4bpp Genesis and SNES tiles for example, and the SNES also has a standard option to use these 2bpp tiles for at least the background(s) if desired. It does mean working with less colours per tile in the 2bpp background(s), kind of like a souped-up NES in that regard, but that's a tradeoff for actually being able to stream in/out even more background tiles per frame than Genesis there. And, because of how the SNES' colours work in general, the fact it's still 24 visible colours per layer and even still 96 colours total on-screen for backgrounds alone if using Mode 0 for example (plus another 128 colours for sprites), along with the SNES' huge 32,768-colour master palettes' colour gamut, it's not quite as big a challenge as it might initially seem to work with less colours than normal there.

There's basically lots of different options on these consoles for trying a bunch of interesting tricks if you know where to look.

So, it will expand the capabilities of the Sega CD and 32X, but not the Genesis itself, as in Genesis cartridge games cannot directly use this extra RAM chip too, correct?

@Axelay71 Have you seen the very early demo of the opening area from Bloodlines that someone did for SNES?

It's pretty interesting that they're adding some extra effects there like a layer of rain or semi-transparent fog, some flashing lightning, a proper fully overlapping HUD/GUI, some additional background parallax, and even a random extra texture on one of the stones in the foreground.

It's all early and very rough right now, and I have zero clue how far they are planning on going with this or indeed if they have enough talent to truly do a great job of it--I'll be honest and say I'm a little skeptical--but it's an interesting start at least.

@X68000 The current development environment and tools is not an indicator of how well a console is technically suited for a port of a particular game, but rather how easy or indeed how much hassle it is to simply make something for said console.

There is no doubt the SNES' specs and capabilities are better suited to a more accurate port of this game for all the reasons I listed previously, just as there is no doubt the Genesis' development tools are simply much more user friendly right now and therefore such a port is currently more practical on that system at the present time. The recent announcement of SNES support in Retro Game Forge, previously known as NESmaker, should hopefully help the SNES side of things there in the not too distant future though.

And technically the SNES more than capable of a great port of Symphony of the Night with some concessions just like the Genesis port obviously. To try to suggest otherwise is disingenuous. The SNES has two great Castlevania games already that pull off plenty cool tricks of their own, someone has started a port of Bloodlines to it recently with some additional graphics effects too, and a port of SotN is not a matter of if it's possible but simply how to go about it and whether someone will actually give it a go at some point. In fact, if "SNESmaker" works as I hope it does and indeed as it should, I might even try making a small demo of a level from SotN on SNES myself just as a proof of concept.

But the point I'd like to make is to not conflate the two things that are actually different, that being the hassle of doing something due to currently immature development tools and a system being technically suited or not to such as thing.

Genesis is getting a pretty solid port of this game. And I think it would be great to see SNES get the same.

So, they're adding each volume to the one base system, yes?

If so, that's pretty cool.