RetroGames

@BulkSlash Both row and line scrolling are trivial for SNES because of its built-in HDMA feature, so it really shouldn't be an issue at all to add a whole lot of that here.

Great stuff so far. Let's see how this progresses. Looking forward to any future updates.

"The hack consists on optimizing the code of the most expensive tasks (this is not a SA1 or FastROM hack). The result is a game that now runs with a rock stable 60 fps framerate. There is no longer any frame drop even in the most extreme situations. It completely changes the pacing of the game. The input lag is also improved and the frame pacing is now perfect." - Upsilandre

And this just goes to show that good code optimization alone can make a huge difference in a whole load of SNES games.

It's great to see this fighting game running at a rock solid 60fps. Excellent job there.

@Sketcz Thanks for putting so much time and effort into this. I'll have a read through everything and see if I can mess around with it. Thanks again.

@MegaManFan Good stuff.

@MegaManFan I shall hold you to your word:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEGWm6JM6RA

Now, where are you planning on sharing it?

@MeloMan OK, then let's keep our fingers crossed he reads these comments and listens and gives us the SNES Chromatic.

@jbrodack Would it not being doing whatever the Game Boy Color did with Game Boy games, no?

I can't recall what that was to be honest.

Edit: Here you go, he recently released some footage of exactly what Game Boy games will look like on the device, which is pretty awesome to my eyes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MzwsFiq9ZE

@MeloMan And on that note, I'd 100% love to see Palmer create a SNES Chromatic. I'm not sure how it would differ from the Analogue NT, but with the quality and accuracy of the current Chromatic to the original Game Boy and Game Boy Colour handhelds, I imagine it could be rather special, and very much so if he actually secures some brand new games for this SNES Chromatic as he has done for the current Chromatic. Now that could be a very big deal indeed imo. With that kind of approach, it's possible he could create a mini revival of the SNES development scene. I would be so up for that, you wouldn't believe--or you possibly would.

@ChromaticDracula No probs.

@ChromaticDracula Eh, wait, isn't the entire point that it plays original carts, and about as close to being basically the original systems as anyone has managed to date at that?

Edit: Yeah, I thought so. It 100% plays the original carts:

https://youtu.be/QmA20GTr8XI?si=2Zt2QFtCtXoG1D0s&t=42

Progressing very nicely. And this the kind of support I'd like to see a lot more of on SNES too.

You know, I'm almost tempted to get one of these for the sheer purity of it. That's what I miss most aobut older consoles. But the price and limited supply is why I'm likely never get one. Still, based on what I know, it seems like a great product for what it is.

Ooh, that last answer is very exciting!

Cool, but you still have carry around the Wiimotes and sensor bar, right?

And surely you can't be using the Nintendo name on it.

Well this looks pretty cool.

Well, you have my attention. Looking forward to seeing more.

With the right artist, you can get some gorgeous art with those four shades of green.

Kool-Aid for sale! Cheap price for the handful of Kool-Aid lovers happening by! If you're drinking bubble tea you're living in a bubble! Get your fresh Kool-Aid here!

I'll just follow up on my previous comments, which you can go back and read, and say it's not Nintendo fans that are "living in a bubble". And it's not Nintendo fans that are stuck living in the past either, as most of them are not even visiting some niche retro site like Time Extension and certainly not trying to rewrite history for their own misguided agenda, but rather out actually enjoying their Nintendo Switch consoles en masse as I type, and possibly even enjoying the new Xbox and PlayStation consoles too.

So, maybe consider which people and fans are trying to convince everyone "Nintendo fans live in a bubble", and indeed why, and you'll possibly figure out who's living in the real bubble and likely stuck very much in the past here.

Another cool looking game for the GB/GBC.

Has anyone else noticed a trend that the retro systems that are easiest for people to develop for, which is a combination of both how easy it is to understand and get to grips with the system's internal capabilities and features plus the user friendliness of any modern development tools that are available and whatever guides for using them, the more new games coming out for it in modern times.

So, what's the secret here, given no one can change the internal hardware and features of these old consoles: Make simple intuitive development tools that any budding game developers can get to grips with, and provide them with clear guides, instructions, and even working examples that are extremely easy and intuitive to follow too.

This is one of the reasons we're seeing so many new games for the likes of GB/GBC and NES for example--and that's a great thing on net.

Now, I think this is what the SNES indie/homebrew community should really put much more of a focus on, as it's nowhere near matured and genuinely democratised and user friendly enough in those areas currently imo. And we'll start to see the fruits of that too.

@nocdaes Yeah, it's obviously a LOt easier to edit and update an already existing game, so I totally understand why most people in the SNES ROM scene are currently doing that, but it will be very interesting to see what they can do when it's entirely their own idea with all the freedom for it to be whatever they, which comes with its own benefits but also challenges.

@Bonggon5 I have a similar reaction. But I think it's just good to see so many people making ROM hacks for SNES, as you have to imagine as least a few of them will eventually graduate to making their own brand new SNES games too. And that's the real win.

Pretty cool.

I'm really hoping that all these people wetting their appetites on the likes of Super Mario World ROM hacks for the SNES--and there are a LOT of them (also Castlevania IV, Super Metroid, Super Mario Kart, Donkey Kong Coutry, Zombie Ate my Neibors, A Link to the Past, etc)--are working up to eventually making their own original games for SNES too.

Just imagine how many cool new SNES games we could have if/when these people graduate to the next level of indie/homebrew development.

A quirky one for sure.

@gingerbeardman Yeah, nothing's really hidden these days to be fair. It's great that all these games are out there for everyone to discover a lot more easily now. There's so many Japanese SNES games I didn't even know existed back in the day, and many of them are actually really good. Lots to play.

Looks pretty cool.

That's actually a pretty cute and fun looking racing game there on SNES:

https://youtu.be/qsuwP26Fav8?si=nT_o6asEyjGy1wsz

There's so many little cool hidden Japanese SNES gems like this.

@Ziondood It's when you try all the third party stuff that you realise the quality of the first party Nintendo products for the most part. No other controller of that era even touched the default SNES controller imo. Although, for certain uses, some third party options were definitely well worth trying. Like if you wanted to play Street Fighter II in a manner closer to the arcade, you might try the best-in-class C&L Championship Joystick for example. But, outside of actually quite niche situations like that, I've always found Nintendo's first party controllers genuinely great in almost every instance. And the SNES controller was/is kinda peak for me.

Nice. Keepin' those SNES pads fresh for anyone who's played them to death.

Actually looks like a cool port.

Cool, another multiplatform retro shmup. Make a SNES version and I'll be on that. And of course, if it doesn't come to SNES--not getting my hopes up on that one--I can easily find a way to play it on my PC that's certainly going to be one of the modern platforms it comes to, so that's great.

Looking pretty good.

@Axelay71 Definitely. I'm confident this developer will want to show some of that off here given his previous work. It looks like he enjoys really showing off every little trick a system can utilize to create very nice full and rich visuals, especially in the levels, and there's plenty of them to use on SNES.

@NinChocolate Although coded entirely from scratch apparently, so in some ways inspired by would be a good description there. And hopefully there's enough original stuff there in the SNES game to really make it something of its own.

@Axelay71 Yeah, from where it's at already, there's lot of potential. Really looking forward to seeing what is shown in the trailer.

I'm looking forward to finding out more about this one.

If he puts as much love and effort into making the SNES shine as he did using pretty much every trick it the Genesis' book on the Mega Man: The Sequel Wars game he worked on there, this could be very cool on SNES.

I'm seeing some decent stuff in the clip already, nothing quite system pushing yet, as there's no copious use of row/line scrolling for lots of faux parallax in the backgrounds, no use of the spare 2/3rds of BG3 for a proper third overlapping layer of parallax (be it something distant in the scene or something like foreground objects or fog or rain or whatever), no transparency in the actual in-game action vs the HUD (actually very cool us of it there though), no use of animated tiles to fake further parallax, no use of some spare sprites to fake even more background parallax, no use of palette cycling for some additional sense of motion in the levels (like waterfalls or animated lights, etc), and so on--almost all of this was employed in most stages in his Genesis Mega Man: The Sequel Wars game, so I'm hoping he'll do the same here on SNES too--but it's a very solid start.

Loads of potential there.

And, even if it's just a simple well made SNES action platform game, that too will be great. Already it has a nice solid visual appeal of its own.

Put this directly in a real console like the Switch 2 or something, make the whole thing slick and seamless, and then I'll probably be interested. It could be future of buying those physical games that don't actually have discs/cards but just the digital codes, where instead you could get a little credit card that you tap on the console to get access to the game properly. That would certainly be a lot cheaper than putting actual games in the boxes, while also giving us back a little bit of that tactile experience again. Then, ideally, they just need to find a way that grants you ownership of and access to that digital version for all time basically.

Well, not terrible. But not great either. Lol

@CocktailCabinet Fair enough. I mean, I actually have a bunch of its games emulated on my Quest 3, and some of them are pretty cool. And it is a piece of Nintendo's history.

Isn't that price a little bonkers for a portable system like this?

I don't mean relative to how much it costs to make and such, but just the fact people are spending that much on a wee retro handheld to play some old games.

@CocktailCabinet Well, it ended up not being a thing at all. But we already know there were plans to make something far more powerful than the basic first prototype PlayStation model seen here. I've linked to an article in my comment above that shows some of the things Nintendo was planning for the final version of the SNES CD, and it's clear it would have been pretty capable for its time. Like I said though, it never happened ultimately, but we do know something at least. And we didn't get any new Nintendo hardware outside of in-cart coprocessors for the SNES until the N64 basically. Let's just pretend the Virtual Boy never existed.

It's great that all these classic Sega games are coming to almost every modern platform these days. Everyone gets to enjoy them, be they Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, whichever company's fans. Good times for all gamers everywhere getting in on the Sega action.

Boy how I wish this was a real official Switch game.

Still looking great.

Is there footage of a remake version of the first/main Sega Rally track, as that's my favourite and the one I really want to see.

These actually look pretty cool. I like the SNES ones, especially the Japanese/European design, because that's my favourite console of all time. And I actually think the PC Engine ones look pretty dang sweet too. Something about those almost flat credit-card-sized HuCards just works really well aesthetically there.

PS. Pretty sure their Twitter said that the SNES was actually the first system they made these for, so they're not just adding SNES to the range now, but rather the new Wave 3 versions add more SNES games into the book format than they had there initially when they kicked off this whole idea.

Edot: https://x.com/Book4Games/status/1805985005039939608

At least that's how I'm reading that tweet.

Edit 2: Yeah, from their Wave 2 kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/book4games/precision-game-storage-2nd-wave-revised-campaign#:~:text=so%20long%20ago%3A-,April%202021,-%3A%20we%20partnered

Hey, I don't think my removed comment was particularly inappropriate given the content of this article and some people's pretty strong opinions expressed therein. It was more just being a little cheeky and poking fun at the fact some people have major issues with some things in some games but are often totally hypocritical when it comes to the endless acts of violence we see in the vast majority of video games, most of which are literally about shooting and killing things--and those things are often humans. I just think people should either stand by their virtue and call for it all to be removed or chill out and remember it's just silly mindless entertainment most of the time, even the decades-old controversial stuff. Literally, a few clumsy pixels on a screen in a game made to titillate and stir up a bit of heated debate really ain't worth getting all genuinely riled up over and going on some crusade. There's actual real and serious issues in the world, and the obvious silliness that is Custer's Revenge is not one of them.

Ooh! It's kinda crazy seeing the Sony/PlayStation brading on a SNES controller.

@garbageprincess Kind of interesting reading about that Nintendo/Philips/Sony CD device, as it's a lot more powerful than the narrative that some bad actors would like to spread these days, saying the SNES CD device wasn't even going to be as powerful or as capable as the Sega CD in an apparent effort to once again undermine anything to do with SNES for whatever reason. But, clearly, Nintendo was working on or at least planning something quite a bit more powerful and capable than the Sega CD at one point (21.477 MHz vs 12.5 MHz, 32-bit vs 16-bit), combined with the SNES' standard much higher colour count, proper transparency effects, up to twice as many background layers, higher max resolution, Mode 7 scaling and rotation, etc. And there's even reports it was going to basically include the equivalent capability of the FX[2] chip directly built in as well at one point, which came from the lips of Dylan Cuthbert himself as I recall:

https://www.nsidr.com/archive/snes-cd-profile/#:~:text=One%20Standard%20to%20Rule%20Them%20All

I've noticed there's been a lot of attempts to try to rewrite history and the narrative around these two consoles by certain people in recent times. Maybe some others have noticed that too. But the more you know, right.

@Sketcz Great. Thanks.

Then, thank you, Cruis'n USA, because Sega Rally Championship is one of the greatest racing games of all time imo. And Cruis'n USA is pretty decent too.

@sanmansan The price of SNES games was higher than Genesis games in general, but evidently not specifically because of the occasional use of in-cart coprocessors. And it's important not to confuse correlation with causation here, so as not to distort the narrative and facts.

The point being, the specific pre-planned strategy of using in-cart coprocessors in some SNES games was actually a pretty great move on Nintendo's part when all is said and done, because it was financially viable, helped keep the SNES relevant for longer, allowed some pretty advanced titles for the time to come to the system that simply wouldn't have been possible otherwise, and it didn't come at an obvious hassle or downside to the end SNES user.

Now, some people might try to reframe things here and/or go off on nerdgasm tangents for their own reasons, but the truth is the SVP was ultimately a flub for Sega, while Nintendo's strategic use of in-cart coprocessors was a win win situation for both Nintendo and SNES gamers. And that's really all I've said from the start.

@Ristar24 Yeah, I'm thinking that's the real angle here.

Now, it could be he's a total monster pushing all his disgusting and genuinely held beliefs through the medium of games, which I would not support in the slightest. Or, he's just playing the system. In which case, I honestly don't care if he's being controversial as all hell.

I'm not genuinely interested in these very basic games anyway, so it's up to each person to choose for themselves on this one.