Hi DF, I am interested in seeing the earliest examples of real time dynamic shadows in games (shadow casting flashlights, ect). It was a similarly transformative graphics feature that brought systems to their knees if not used conservatively.
"Severance: Blade of Darkness" was one of the pioneers that did it really well, considering the technology at the time (2001). Just 3 years later "Doom 3" raised the bar a lot.
@@AutomotiveCNC I had no idea SBD even existed. Very fascinating. For a 2001 game, the way they did the lighting was seriously impressive - and expensive. It's really not an exaggeration to say it was the Crysis of its day. I'd love to hear DF dig into it and other games of its era including 2001's 'Shrek'. It was supposedly the first full game to feature deferred shading.
@@AutomotiveCNC There's also HumanSoft's Seed, which was never finished cause they couldn't find a publisher, but there's a demo build from 1999 that has dynamic shadows.
With regards to Race Driving's controls, the creator of the hack made a different hack where the game runs really smooth, but at the original intended speed. The version you're playing is sped up in addition to running smoother. This messes up the physics according to the creator.
There were actually quite a few 3D games on the GBA. The system had a relatively strong CPU and could actually render individual pixels to the screen instead of just tiles. So they could implement a decent software renderer and didn't have to pull off as many weird tricks as these SNES games.
@@Chapperino Not the OP, but the Colin McRae Rally titles, the Max Payne "port" (more of a reimagining) and Driver 3 immediately come to mind. The Doom and Duke Nukem GBA games are also pretty impressive technically, but obviously mostly sprite-based.
One thing that is certainly missing a mention here is Wolfenstein 3D. No chips, bare hardware. Runs and plays pretty impressive for the time, for a 3.58 MHz system.
12:20 speaking of hills. I'd love for you to look at Top Gear on SNES. It's always mystified me how they do the visuals since it's not a mode 7 game but has hills and high speed 3D. Was always a childhood favorite
11:15 my guess (based on how some GBA games do this trick) is that Mode 7 is in use, however some Mode 7 transforms are skipped/duplicated on the HBlank (essentially skipping/duplicating lines of pixels) to stretch the road based on the "gradient" of the hills from the camera's origin to the draw-distance (in a straight line) It's really difficult to describe without a whiteboard and a pen!
12:30 yeah I think I'm definitely right, when you moved the camera to be perpendicular to the road surface the gradient of the hills disappeared (because it's Mode 7, can only be a flat plane), just like the GBA games that do this trick
12:55 it's not using colour math, it's almost certainly using the same HBlank period for setting the Mode 7 transformations per-line to also adjust the palette, this is the cheapest and most common way to achieve fog with Mode 7
20:00 aha! yes this is the same technique as Speed Racer HOWEVER: it does not do HBlank affine transformations to rotate the Mode 7 background, it only does affine scaling, so a LOT less processing required as the camera is fixed, plus the "illusion" of the hills does not break as you cannot rotate the camera
I came to the comments just to find the answer to the slopes: I’m not a computer programmer, I’m a professional musician, yet I’ve always been completely fascinated by how these early 3D problems were solved on the hardware of the time. The ingenuity is very satisfying to decode. Thank you knowledgeable folks! 🙏
When Vitor was developing that hack, he discovered that the SNES version was very poorly programmed (performance wise) in the first place. So, it definitely could have definitely run a little better without an SA-1.
I agree, the SA-1 is not necessary to increase the performance if you use for example the Bsnes emulator, you can overclock the snes main cpu and increasing the stock speed to about 140%; it gives great results.
Out of curiosity, would you count Wolfenstein 3D's SNES port count as an example? Asking because it's technically using Mode 7 but solely to scale up the rendering window, the actual 3D is done in a manner similar to what Doom would use later
No, the 3D isn't done in a similar manner to Doom. It's raycasting, and it's done in basically the same way as PC Wolfenstein - it's not a custom engine like SNES Doom, so there's not really much to say about it. It would count, though, yeah.
Great video. Would you be interested in something similar for the Genesis/Mega Drive? :D Speed Racer and Super Baja uses Mode 7 combined with scanline trickery. Like the 3D snowspeeder stage in Super Empire Strikes Back. A game like Super Mario Kart use a fixed set of values to determine how much the background is scaled on every scanline. This gives the tracks a flat look. Games like Speed Racer changes the scaling values per frame (update?) to create the hills & valleys. And combine it with color blending to accentuate the impression depth. Funny thing is, because the terrain in Super ESB is scanline based, and not true 3D geometry, when you're approaching a hill, if you turn your speeder around 360 degrees, you'll see the "hill" closing in on your position from all sides, like a ring. The clouds in "Kyle Petty's No Fear Racing" looks like they're scrolling up (and sideways during turns). But the game is using the background pixelation effect (in combination with HDMA, and color blending) to prevent it from looking like they're simply scrolling up.
Super Off-road: The Baja was such a great racing game for it's time! My dad used to play it with me when I was super young, and he always used to crack up laughing when you'd hit a sweet jump and a random voice would yell "ARRIBA!!!" Good times.
24:47 he was using Nitrous the whole start of the race and only kept going because of being hit from behind by other cars. Then after a few seconds he starts using the real gas button.
A lot of these games really put me in mind of the 3D Amiga games I grew up playing. The Lotus trilogy, Hunter, Epic, Vroom, Legends of Valor, etc. Would very much enjoy seeing an episode looking into Amiga 3D visuals in much the same way as this one
No Second Prize and Robocop 3 blew my mind, and I'm a console gamer who never even saw an Amiga in the wild. They destroy anything the SNES and Megadrive were doing on base hardware, even if the Atari ST runs this kind of 3d a bit faster. (And does every other type of game worse.)
I wouldn't say the Lotus games were 3D. They were using the same racing game technique of games like Outrun and Pole Position. Hunter, No Second Prize, Formula One Grand Prix, Frontier: Elite 2 and such were full 3D.
They used the regular road engine from all racing games of that era, an angled road being modified on each scanline to create a different depth. Top Gear does it really well, it creates a great feeling of speed. And no, Top Gear 1 and 2 don't use any enhancement chip, the first is even in slowrom mode. But Top Gear 3000 uses DSP-4 chip to process more than one road at a time, allowing track splitting and 4 player mode.
Is indeed the same processor as the one inside the SNES but clocked at about 10 Mhz, vs 2.68 (low rom speed) or 3.58 Mhz (fast rom speed). It also has some extra graphical features to the snes ppu.
The SA-1 is the same CPU core if the original SNES CPU but with additional math instructions (a multiplier, for example), additional memory and a lot more clock speed.
I *loved* Kyle Petty's No Fear Racing as a kid. It was always available to rent at the local grocery store. The upgrade system and progression were great.
I'd love to see a "The Origins of the 3D Graphics Card Part II", with some earlier windows games doing 3D stuff, before rasterization techniques like Hardware Transform and Lighting became the norm. Lots of games going for very weird approaches trying to compensate for the not-so-brilliant performance and features of mid and late '90s video cards.
My favourite example of weird rendering method predates 3D hardware. It's Ecstatica game series that renders everything in spheroids. Little Big Adventure 2 I think caches rendered backgrounds, that was interesting as well. Then Outcast did a lot of things. When 3D accelerators came, we gained some things and lost others. At least until DX10 era or so.
No nostalgia for me as I had a Commodore Amiga during this era, but as per usual I watched the video with interest. It’s all about the awesome presentation of the content, as per usual!
I've never seen Race Drivin' before- but I did grow up playing a whole bunch of Broderbund's Stunts in DOS. Never knew how blatantly that game pulled from the Drivin' series, haha
What made 3D plane games possible on the SNES was not just mode 7 in itself because it could only do affine transforms so no perspective (z divide). It was only combining mode 7 with HDMA, which meant changing the scale factor on each scanline, that made the trick. So I guess changing the terrain height just required more computation but is essence was the same technic as in Mario Kart or F-Zero. Just a guess ...
Exactly. And it kinda irritates that lots of people think Mode7 automatically gives you the perspective projected plane. Nah, it does not, and it is capable to much more than that. Actually, some of the racing games in the video still use Mode7, just not perspective projected.
It is actually prety fun game, here in the video they only played in low gear, why didn´t shift to high gear? that is why the game felt slow. Also they didn´t mention that this game switches to bg mode 5 high res ( 512x224)during the night transition, sand storms and the course map to simulate transparency. The sand storms transition feels very nice as the transparency effect intensifies as do the storms´ strenght.
That mech game going through the tunnels looks badass, same with the off road jeep game. Imagine if for the launch of the SNES there was a comercial showed clips from all these titles. We would have lost our minds.
Star Trek Starfleet Academy manages to do some pretty good 3D models for the time without the need for a SuperFX chip or anything else if I am correct. It's slow paced but from a technical perspective it's not a bad effort.
I remember buying my first console, a Sega Genesis in 1993 and later adding a Sega CD, a few years later, a 32X. Incredible stuff...! It's amazing how far we've come throughout the years. I feel no need to get something better or more advanced than my Xbox Series X or my PlayStation 5. The graphics are awesome, and /games load very quickly, which was a big problem with previous generation consoles. I have a desktop with a RTX 3090, and a laptop with a RTX 3060. I barely use them for gaming. My Xbox is my main "gaming machine".
Having a SA-1 chip in the cart is NO different than having an FX chip in the cart - neither are "stock" hardware. So it makes zero sense to say, okay no FX but we'll make an exception for SA-1. For what? They are equivalent in that they both require something (on cart hardware) much more powerful than the stock system.
Would love a Similar Special about 3D games on the GBA there were really impessive ones like, Astreix and Obelix XXL that was a FUlly 3D platformer on the GBA.
I actually want graphics technology to hit a HUGE roadblock, so that ingenuity and clever coding comes back to the forefront... Stuff like that facilitates new hardware technology...
sega mega drive have many games like this. infact first 3d universe game star crusier out 90 on md. its have 3d space section and 3d doom like planets and its rpg on universe map. but those days ı only played f15 strike eagle which is allow to graphics low mediium high and visibly. duke nukem 3d mega drive ans lost world 3d sections one of latest examples. toy story and vectorman and sonic 3d can be count 3dsh. early games like after burner 2 and super hangon can count 3d and they are fast even fastest games on lybary.
I loved Super Off Road Baja as a kid. Blew my mind that is was not using the FX Chip and it looked liked polygons using textures. Anyone remember Skiing and Snowboarding Tommy Moe's Winter Extreme? Yeah, I did not either but picked it up recently from a con and found it to have similar effect as Super Off Road Baja but a little smoother.
About Speed Racer: The SNES' mode 7 allows a single tile map to be scaled and rotated in using a *2D* matrix, it doesn't actually do any sort of 3D perspective on its own. However, the 2D matrix *can* be changed between scanlines during raster. Making it bigger/smaller gradually as the screen is drawn line by line creates the illusion of perspective. What Speed Racer seems to be doing is calculating a different "inclination" mid frame based on what parts of the track are being drawn. This calculation plus the game logic might be too much for the CPU, hence the bad frame rate.
Theme suggestion: "helicopter games" Mostly inspired by when one of you said "this is a helicopter game" in this video, I imagined that to be the name of a genre. But, I'm also hankering to reminisce about Desert Strike, here. I remember some side-scrolling thing I used to play on my uncle's Amiga, too. Go go helicopter games!
That Street Racer game reminds me of the MSDos one that came on a demo CD with PC Gamer / Format, possibly early 1993. Different game from this SNES one, but no less horrible :D
still so little on PSone games, they very much retro and so much new stuff and genres were invented on this console. launch games are not really representative at all - i'd love some kind of 'best of (year)' revisited.
It would be interesting to see outrun converted to the snes using a sa-1 chip,also to the mega cd.Wonder which one would would run better and have more advanced visuals if cart memory wasn't restricted.
Watching this makes me appreciative of how far gaming technology and overall graphical capability has come! Still interesting to see the base Snes pushed to its limits.
These retro plays rule. Its like hanging out with my 2 buds who know way more about games than me. Great contrast to your longform more produced content.
The Hard Driving on the Sega Genesis runs on way faster than the SNES, by a mile.! WOW..! Genesis had the power to muscle through. The Speed Racer game is weird since the car doesn't move around the road, it's locked in the same spot on screen.
You guys should do 3D games on the Megadrive next 🙏🏽
3D on the Genesis blows this out of the water ☠️
@@jennyholiday88 would be funny to check it on the Steel Talons example.
@@shiru8bit
Steel Talons being the rare example of the SNES doing a 3d game better. The Megadrive team got way too ambitious...
@@jennyholiday88 nah, better stick to GBA.
@@juststatedtheobvious9633 Still ain't no overall improvement, though.
Hi DF,
I am interested in seeing the earliest examples of real time dynamic shadows in games (shadow casting flashlights, ect). It was a similarly transformative graphics feature that brought systems to their knees if not used conservatively.
"Severance: Blade of Darkness" was one of the pioneers that did it really well, considering the technology at the time (2001). Just 3 years later "Doom 3" raised the bar a lot.
@@AutomotiveCNC I had no idea SBD even existed. Very fascinating. For a 2001 game, the way they did the lighting was seriously impressive - and expensive. It's really not an exaggeration to say it was the Crysis of its day.
I'd love to hear DF dig into it and other games of its era including 2001's 'Shrek'. It was supposedly the first full game to feature deferred shading.
@@AutomotiveCNC There's also HumanSoft's Seed, which was never finished cause they couldn't find a publisher, but there's a demo build from 1999 that has dynamic shadows.
I was actually thinking they should do something similar. The evolution of lighting in games would be fascinating.
Half-Life 2 and Doom 3 come to mind. Silent Hill 2 used a fake technique that looked convincing.
With regards to Race Driving's controls, the creator of the hack made a different hack where the game runs really smooth, but at the original intended speed. The version you're playing is sped up in addition to running smoother. This messes up the physics according to the creator.
Please do also a special on GBA 3D games!
There were actually quite a few 3D games on the GBA. The system had a relatively strong CPU and could actually render individual pixels to the screen instead of just tiles. So they could implement a decent software renderer and didn't have to pull off as many weird tricks as these SNES games.
Can you list s few good ones?
@@Chapperino Not the OP, but the Colin McRae Rally titles, the Max Payne "port" (more of a reimagining) and Driver 3 immediately come to mind. The Doom and Duke Nukem GBA games are also pretty impressive technically, but obviously mostly sprite-based.
This (or these?) Asterix game looks quite impressive and playable.
@@Chapperino Super Monkey Ball Jr.
One thing that is certainly missing a mention here is Wolfenstein 3D. No chips, bare hardware. Runs and plays pretty impressive for the time, for a 3.58 MHz system.
You say 3.58, did it run in FastROM?
Also, Wolfenstein 3D does use Mode 7 to upscale a lower resolution.
12:20 speaking of hills. I'd love for you to look at Top Gear on SNES. It's always mystified me how they do the visuals since it's not a mode 7 game but has hills and high speed 3D. Was always a childhood favorite
Yeah, that one felt missing! Top Gear 2 was especially fast and fluid.
11:15 my guess (based on how some GBA games do this trick) is that Mode 7 is in use, however some Mode 7 transforms are skipped/duplicated on the HBlank (essentially skipping/duplicating lines of pixels) to stretch the road based on the "gradient" of the hills from the camera's origin to the draw-distance (in a straight line)
It's really difficult to describe without a whiteboard and a pen!
12:30 yeah I think I'm definitely right, when you moved the camera to be perpendicular to the road surface the gradient of the hills disappeared (because it's Mode 7, can only be a flat plane), just like the GBA games that do this trick
12:55 it's not using colour math, it's almost certainly using the same HBlank period for setting the Mode 7 transformations per-line to also adjust the palette, this is the cheapest and most common way to achieve fog with Mode 7
20:00 aha! yes this is the same technique as Speed Racer HOWEVER: it does not do HBlank affine transformations to rotate the Mode 7 background, it only does affine scaling, so a LOT less processing required as the camera is fixed, plus the "illusion" of the hills does not break as you cannot rotate the camera
Yeah. Using mode 7 to create perspective already necessitates per-scanline computations. This is just taking it a step further.
I came to the comments just to find the answer to the slopes: I’m not a computer programmer, I’m a professional musician, yet I’ve always been completely fascinated by how these early 3D problems were solved on the hardware of the time. The ingenuity is very satisfying to decode. Thank you knowledgeable folks! 🙏
Now do Sega genesis! F22 is one of my favs but runs so bad lol
Yes, very impresive despite the low frame rate
I was expecting to see Spectre and Faceball 2000.
When Vitor was developing that hack, he discovered that the SNES version was very poorly programmed (performance wise) in the first place. So, it definitely could have definitely run a little better without an SA-1.
I agree, the SA-1 is not necessary to increase the performance if you use for example the Bsnes emulator, you can overclock the snes main cpu and increasing the stock speed to about 140%; it gives great results.
I believe it was a really early SNES game too
Out of curiosity, would you count Wolfenstein 3D's SNES port count as an example? Asking because it's technically using Mode 7 but solely to scale up the rendering window, the actual 3D is done in a manner similar to what Doom would use later
No, the 3D isn't done in a similar manner to Doom. It's raycasting, and it's done in basically the same way as PC Wolfenstein - it's not a custom engine like SNES Doom, so there's not really much to say about it.
It would count, though, yeah.
Great video. Would you be interested in something similar for the Genesis/Mega Drive? :D
Speed Racer and Super Baja uses Mode 7 combined with scanline trickery. Like the 3D snowspeeder stage in Super Empire Strikes Back. A game like Super Mario Kart use a fixed set of values to determine how much the background is scaled on every scanline. This gives the tracks a flat look. Games like Speed Racer changes the scaling values per frame (update?) to create the hills & valleys. And combine it with color blending to accentuate the impression depth.
Funny thing is, because the terrain in Super ESB is scanline based, and not true 3D geometry, when you're approaching a hill, if you turn your speeder around 360 degrees, you'll see the "hill" closing in on your position from all sides, like a ring.
The clouds in "Kyle Petty's No Fear Racing" looks like they're scrolling up (and sideways during turns). But the game is using the background pixelation effect (in combination with HDMA, and color blending) to prevent it from looking like they're simply scrolling up.
I would really like to see a similar video with Genesis / Mega Drive 3D titles...
the J is not pronounced as a Y if you check out the Rival Turf opening. it definitily sounds like jah-li-co
That Super Off-Road game looks really impressive. It's kinda like Road Rush 1/2/3 from Mega Drive, but somehow noticeably smoother.
It's a genuinely fun game, I believe it had 2 player splitscreen as well
It definitely is very smooth for this type of game but the steering is kind of ass.
Super Off-road: The Baja was such a great racing game for it's time! My dad used to play it with me when I was super young, and he always used to crack up laughing when you'd hit a sweet jump and a random voice would yell "ARRIBA!!!" Good times.
When will you do a DF Retro of Metroid Prime 2, the best looking game of the PS2/ Xbox/ GC generation?
DC/PS2/Xbox/GC*
@@Pedro_The_Neco
You want a cookie now or what?
@@Pedro_The_Neco DC was dead before the generation even started, so it doesn't count.
@@RiasatSalminSami
There were still official Dreamcast games released in 2002.
@@juststatedtheobvious9633 There were still official ps2 games released in 2013. Doesn't mean the console wasn't irrelevant by then.
24:47 he was using Nitrous the whole start of the race and only kept going because of being hit from behind by other cars. Then after a few seconds he starts using the real gas button.
Please do 3D on the GBA. There are so many cool tricks on that system.
Shoutout to the Thunderbolt theme song! Everyone check out Jackie Chan's golden pipes on that bad boy
Such a good movie. Wonder if this was because of Audi or John.
Thunderbolt is my favorite Jackie Chan movie, a simple but very good movie.
What, no love for DRAKKHEN? Now that's a balls-to-the-wall 3D in your face playin' it loud slam jammin 6-DOF piece of innovative leisure.
Great 3d there, but only because it's using 3d for the bare minimum....
A lot of these games really put me in mind of the 3D Amiga games I grew up playing. The Lotus trilogy, Hunter, Epic, Vroom, Legends of Valor, etc. Would very much enjoy seeing an episode looking into Amiga 3D visuals in much the same way as this one
StuntCarRacer!
No Second Prize and Robocop 3 blew my mind, and I'm a console gamer who never even saw an Amiga in the wild.
They destroy anything the SNES and Megadrive were doing on base hardware, even if the Atari ST runs this kind of 3d a bit faster. (And does every other type of game worse.)
And it’s surprising that those Amiga games run a bit smoother too.
I wouldn't say the Lotus games were 3D. They were using the same racing game technique of games like Outrun and Pole Position. Hunter, No Second Prize, Formula One Grand Prix, Frontier: Elite 2 and such were full 3D.
Thank you, guys! MORE of these videos please 🙏
What about the Top Gear games? Did they use the SuperFX chip? They were great games that did a good job of simulating 3D.
They used the regular road engine from all racing games of that era, an angled road being modified on each scanline to create a different depth.
Top Gear does it really well, it creates a great feeling of speed.
And no, Top Gear 1 and 2 don't use any enhancement chip, the first is even in slowrom mode. But Top Gear 3000 uses DSP-4 chip to process more than one road at a time, allowing track splitting and 4 player mode.
the SA-1 is like adding a new CPU processor to the SNES.
Is indeed the same processor as the one inside the SNES but clocked at about 10 Mhz, vs 2.68 (low rom speed) or 3.58 Mhz (fast rom speed). It also has some extra graphical features to the snes ppu.
The SA-1 is the same CPU core if the original SNES CPU but with additional math instructions (a multiplier, for example), additional memory and a lot more clock speed.
All the mode-7 segments in Square's SNES RPGs show what could be done with it in a non racing context.
That prerendered background trick was used in a few GBC racers as well - Toy Story, Championship Motocross etc.
Love episodes about retro gaming technology!
I *loved* Kyle Petty's No Fear Racing as a kid. It was always available to rent at the local grocery store. The upgrade system and progression were great.
love they are using jackie chan thunderbolt song :D as background music
I'd love to see a "The Origins of the 3D Graphics Card Part II", with some earlier windows games doing 3D stuff, before rasterization techniques like Hardware Transform and Lighting became the norm. Lots of games going for very weird approaches trying to compensate for the not-so-brilliant performance and features of mid and late '90s video cards.
My favourite example of weird rendering method predates 3D hardware. It's Ecstatica game series that renders everything in spheroids.
Little Big Adventure 2 I think caches rendered backgrounds, that was interesting as well. Then Outcast did a lot of things.
When 3D accelerators came, we gained some things and lost others. At least until DX10 era or so.
No nostalgia for me as I had a Commodore Amiga during this era, but as per usual I watched the video with interest. It’s all about the awesome presentation of the content, as per usual!
I've never seen Race Drivin' before- but I did grow up playing a whole bunch of Broderbund's Stunts in DOS. Never knew how blatantly that game pulled from the Drivin' series, haha
I’m sad that you guys didn’t show off Star Trek: Starfleet Academy. It even got a somewhat direct port to the 32x.
What made 3D plane games possible on the SNES was not just mode 7 in itself because it could only do affine transforms so no perspective (z divide). It was only combining mode 7 with HDMA, which meant changing the scale factor on each scanline, that made the trick. So I guess changing the terrain height just required more computation but is essence was the same technic as in Mario Kart or F-Zero. Just a guess ...
Exactly. And it kinda irritates that lots of people think Mode7 automatically gives you the perspective projected plane. Nah, it does not, and it is capable to much more than that. Actually, some of the racing games in the video still use Mode7, just not perspective projected.
Oof, 1:42 the worse port of that game too boot, it's pretty sad when the Gameboy had a better version than the SNES.
What's with the Jackie Chan movie theme music for the intro LOL. I think that's from Thunderbolt? LOL
Wolfenstein 3D didn't use a SuperFX chip either.
Oh gosh... Accele Brid is just so hard to watch. I never get motion sickness from games... so congratulations for figuring out how!
Mode 7 might not be combatible with NASCAR but it *is* kind of compatible with Indianapolis which isn’t really banked
2:00 reminds me of Stunt Car Racer on Amiga it would drop to like 5 fps lol it came out in 1989 a year before this game
Big Run was my guilty pleasure on the Super Famicom back then even though the reviews hated it.
It is actually prety fun game, here in the video they only played in low gear, why didn´t shift to high gear? that is why the game felt slow. Also they didn´t mention that this game switches to bg mode 5 high res ( 512x224)during the night transition, sand storms and the course map to simulate transparency. The sand storms transition feels very nice as the transparency effect intensifies as do the storms´ strenght.
Thunderbolt! Hell yeah!
That mech game going through the tunnels looks badass, same with the off road jeep game. Imagine if for the launch of the SNES there was a comercial showed clips from all these titles. We would have lost our minds.
The Baja actually looks convincing like real flat polygonal planes. Without the usual distortion effects you get from any faked 3d.
Maaan....had a huge grin when i heard the intro...its been a long ass time since i watched thunderbolt
Star Trek Starfleet Academy manages to do some pretty good 3D models for the time without the need for a SuperFX chip or anything else if I am correct. It's slow paced but from a technical perspective it's not a bad effort.
Probably the smartest use of 3d on a stock SNES.
Great video loved it. Video idea…. A pilot wings SNES retrospective?
I remember buying my first console, a Sega Genesis in 1993 and later adding a Sega CD, a few years later, a 32X. Incredible stuff...! It's amazing how far we've come throughout the years. I feel no need to get something better or more advanced than my Xbox Series X or my PlayStation 5. The graphics are awesome, and /games load very quickly, which was a big problem with previous generation consoles. I have a desktop with a RTX 3090, and a laptop with a RTX 3060. I barely use them for gaming. My Xbox is my main "gaming machine".
Having a SA-1 chip in the cart is NO different than having an FX chip in the cart - neither are "stock" hardware. So it makes zero sense to say, okay no FX but we'll make an exception for SA-1. For what? They are equivalent in that they both require something (on cart hardware) much more powerful than the stock system.
Would love a Similar Special about 3D games on the GBA there were really impessive ones like, Astreix and Obelix XXL that was a FUlly 3D platformer on the GBA.
I actually want graphics technology to hit a HUGE roadblock, so that ingenuity and clever coding comes back to the forefront... Stuff like that facilitates new hardware technology...
I know other 3D SNES games like Star Trek Starfleet Academy Starship Bridge Simulator and Wolfenstein 3D.
thunderbolt with jackie chan main theme lol, love it:)
Great vid, love console limit pushing games and history, keep it up!
All mode 7 perspective is a "line by line" basis. Speed Racer is using mode 7. Super Off Road uses mode 7. Come on DF, at least know your tech haha
sega mega drive have many games like this. infact first 3d universe game star crusier out 90 on md. its have 3d space section and 3d doom like planets and its rpg on universe map. but those days ı only played f15 strike eagle which is allow to graphics low mediium high and visibly. duke nukem 3d mega drive ans lost world 3d sections one of latest examples. toy story and vectorman and sonic 3d can be count 3dsh. early games like after burner 2 and super hangon can count 3d and they are fast even fastest games on lybary.
Great content John and Audi, looking forward to the next DF Retro Play episode.👍
Super off road really looks impressive ngl.
Speed Racer's FPS is definitely playable. The platforming could use some improvement.
The theme song to Jackie Chan's Thunderbolt was unexpected.
I was always under the impression that Speed Racer and Off Road, even the snow speeder level in Empire strikes back, were using mode-7???
They are, but they modify the mode 7 bg with some hdma per scanline trickery.
Wow, you know a game runs poorly when you cut to Cybermorph and it looks smooth and attractive.
Yeah, they seemed to be either remembering the Jaguar as way worse than it was, or their emulation improved things...
The N64 Offroad game is an arcade port. The arcade version's even better.
I loved Super Off Road Baja as a kid. Blew my mind that is was not using the FX Chip and it looked liked polygons using textures. Anyone remember Skiing and Snowboarding Tommy Moe's Winter Extreme? Yeah, I did not either but picked it up recently from a con and found it to have similar effect as Super Off Road Baja but a little smoother.
About Speed Racer:
The SNES' mode 7 allows a single tile map to be scaled and rotated in using a *2D* matrix, it doesn't actually do any sort of 3D perspective on its own.
However, the 2D matrix *can* be changed between scanlines during raster. Making it bigger/smaller gradually as the screen is drawn line by line creates the illusion of perspective.
What Speed Racer seems to be doing is calculating a different "inclination" mid frame based on what parts of the track are being drawn. This calculation plus the game logic might be too much for the CPU, hence the bad frame rate.
Theme suggestion: "helicopter games"
Mostly inspired by when one of you said "this is a helicopter game" in this video, I imagined that to be the name of a genre. But, I'm also hankering to reminisce about Desert Strike, here. I remember some side-scrolling thing I used to play on my uncle's Amiga, too. Go go helicopter games!
That Street Racer game reminds me of the MSDos one that came on a demo CD with PC Gamer / Format, possibly early 1993. Different game from this SNES one, but no less horrible :D
I remember of Air cavalry who blew me away at the time
19:10 Ivan Stewart, not John Madden....I don't think.
I used to play the hell out of Super Off Road: The BAJA back in the days. I still own the complete game (box with manual)
Wish there was actual sound from the SNES mixed in.
John: “What the heck’s going on here”
Audi: “Geometry’s going on, John”
Never change guys.
Super off road on N64 looks sweet
You forgot Drakken and Drakken 2 Dragon View.
I thought i was going to see Drakkhen. Am i wrong or is that not superfx?
still so little on PSone games, they very much retro and so much new stuff and genres were invented on this console. launch games are not really representative at all - i'd love some kind of 'best of (year)' revisited.
Why call the Playstation a PSone? It's like adding slim on the end of the other Playstations.
It would be interesting to see outrun converted to the snes using a sa-1 chip,also to the mega cd.Wonder which one would would run better and have more advanced visuals if cart memory wasn't restricted.
That music at the beginning from Jackie Chan's Thunderbolt.
I cant picture a world without digital foundry, esspecially df retro. It has becone integral to my life lol.
Well said.
Watching this makes me appreciative of how far gaming technology and overall graphical capability has come! Still interesting to see the base Snes pushed to its limits.
Is that the Thunderbolt theme?
hard drivin' on gb and nes runs so much better
These games showcased a dynamic framerate way before Biomutant did on modern machines.
I remember Hard Driving for Genesis...so many hours on that one.
I played the game Dabaja during its day and it was awesome! Good day
Not sure if these are good examples, but Nigel Mansell's World Championship Racing and Kawasaki Superbike Challenge were ok 3D games on the SNES
Indeed, altough both games used more polygons in the Genesis/ Megadrive versions. But they are prety decent and entertaining games.
I loved Nigel Mansell's game back then.
Here's an idea: A full Metal Gear Solid 4 playthrough by Audi. Maybe he'll reach a more nuanced opinion about the game. 🤪
PC Engine? 3D style games? I dunno.
You should explore 3D on Genesis/Mega Drive
I think Toy Story Racer on the GB Color uses a similar trick as Accele Brid
It does, but it's a thousand times better.
Which is the only time someone's said that about Tiertex, without it being an insult.
Love me some Digital Foundtry retro.
You should check out Iridion 2 on GBA :)
Or even Iridion 1. Sure, it's a lot worse, but the fake 3d looks cool as hell from a Space Harrier perspective.
Ιt runs smoother but also runs at a faster rate, thats why its uncontrolable.
That version of the hack breaks the physics. It was never intended to run that fast.
Just when I got curios about early 3D and sprite scaling, DF uploads a video about that :)
Steel Talons was great in the arcade, but man, those home versions are rough.
These retro plays rule. Its like hanging out with my 2 buds who know way more about games than me. Great contrast to your longform more produced content.
race drivin on the gameboy was better than the snes version
It's also better than every other version, due to the improved tire grip.
That hack of Hard Drivin is insane!! holy sht!
Yep, now it runs faster than the original arcade game.🤣
The Hard Driving on the Sega Genesis runs on way faster than the SNES, by a mile.! WOW..! Genesis had the power to muscle through. The Speed Racer game is weird since the car doesn't move around the road, it's locked in the same spot on screen.