Games That Push The Limits of the Sega Mega Drive
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 19 มิ.ย. 2024
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Have a look at Coding Secrets excellent discussion of Red Zone:
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The Sega Mega Drive, The Sega Genesis, it had two names but it was awesome and I'm taking a look at a few of the games that pushed it to the limits. Genesis does what Nintendon't? Does that hold any water? Well I'm going to look for a few examples whilst I'm looking for limit pushers maybe I'll uncover some surprises.
00:00 Intro waffle
00:42 Ranger X
06:20 Red Zone
12:00 Kawasaki Superbike Challenge
16:07 Virtua Racer
17:30 Toy Story
18:00 Blood Shot
19:15 Duke Nukem 3D
23:29 Panorama Cotton
29:00 Ending gibberish - เกม
I wrote Bloodshot and can confirm you are 100% correct about the symmetry and palette trick. I was quite pleased with the idea at the time.
Great to hear from you! Bloodshot was amazing!
I had that game on my Mega Drive when it was relevant, and my hat goes off to you. I thought it is the stand out FPS for the system, and disappointed it’s not talked about more on retro TH-cam channels. Especially in those hardware pusher episodes.
Oh hey Jim (I used to work with you at Climax!). Dude, Bloodshot is seriously impressive, I had no idea a 68K could manage anything like that back then. Lovely stuff sir.
@Jim Blackler, I wonder if you and Sharopolis ever played Pier Solar and the Great Architects and Paprium?
You did a great job, JIM! From Russia with love. Back in my childhood it was so impressive for me
That Duke Nukem 3D port is both wonderfully brilliant and utterly horrifying at the same time.
Are there any videos explaining how it works?
*Non FX SNES game*
Star Trek: Starfleet Academy was another 3D polygonal game that doesn't use the FX chip. It runs...ok, I enjoyed it back in the day, played it throe all the way to the end. Thought it is hard to play now. I think it managed to get away with it because it was mostly just rendering the ships against a basic blackness of space, with a few stars. Probably would have been a lot more playable today if it had the FX chip.
I didn't know about that one thanks! It actually looks OK too, better than Race Drivin anyaway.
Panorama Cotton is sheer beauty. Never seen a more beautiful 16bit game, especially from Sega. Well done.
I like the weak hardware 16bit time.
Programmers really use their brain to achieve the impossible goals.
Some MD games are really amazing. I still remember the first time I saw the cotton girl game. Really shock me back in time. Still amazing today.
Limitations breed inspirations.
So did PS1. That system, because of its slow C graphics libraries Andorra limitations, it really wasn't more powerful than the 2 year older 3DO, but devs learned how to overcome its limitations and make it perform.
Panorama Cotton makes me wonder if someone could make Panzer Dragoon for the Genesis today.
There is a Panzer Dragoon on the Game Gear, so it's not impossible.
It shows them how Space harrier should have looked
Anything can be ported to anything. You just need to use your imagination. Tweak Zaxxon a bit and you have Panzer Dragoon on the Atari 2600 :D
Space Harrier is more fun to be honest
Panorama Cotton's graphics are mind blowing. i wouldn't say it looks as good as star fox, but it's really close. they're not going for the same look though, so Panorama Cotton is the king of sprite scaling shooters(like Space Harrier, After Burner, etc). i don't think the snes could even come remotely close to Panorama without a serious helper chip
Adventures of Batman and Robin was crazy advanced on the Genesis. Some really impressive stuff going on there
I expected it to be there.
And it's music was superb.
graphics and sound is awesome in Adventures of B+robin, but omg the gamepay is sooooooooo repetitive and the levels just go on and on and seem to never end.
Im a noob and played through a unlimited continous version. Levels are ridiculously long and hard to beat. Somewhat ruins the fun of it.
That 2nd boss fight on Ranger X with the moving corridors in the background was one of the most impressive effects I'd ever seen on a 16-bit game
Game is badass the controls graphics music levels all great
Wow, you should really play some SNES games. The problem with that corridor effect is that it is extremely limiting to the level design.
@@davidaitken8503 Snes games are slow
@@kasjamm Genesis games are slow. Do you see the problem with that statement? Not only is it ridiculous to claim that every game on a system is a particular speed, but what metric do you use to define what makes a game slow or fast? Is it the speed of the player controlled character and enemies? Is it the amount of enemies and bullets being thrown at you all at once? Is it how quickly the player has to react to what is happening on screen? Is it how frequently they have to react? What are you using to base such a claim on?
I've played hundreds of games on the NES, SNES, Genesis, Turbo Grafx 16, etc. and I can honestly say your statement makes absolutely no sense based on plenty of games I've played. Based on the metrics I already mentioned I think some of the "fastest" games I've played from that era actually are on the SNES. Everything from the high speed racing of F-Zero to the relentless barrage of enemies in shooters like Super Smash TV and Space Megaforce.
@@davidaitken8503 The snes has a slow cpu compared to the genesis and can run games faster with more going on
I think that on the FPS section you just missed one of the best examples: Zero Tolerance. The game didn't used just 90o angle walls like the other games and had animated wall textures and other nice stuff.
Your console nicknames are some next-level stuff.
Sugared Gymnasium🤣
Welcome
It's a time-honoured tradition in UK video gaming journalism, back to the days of Zzap!64 and Computer and Video Games (and possibly before that!). The Beige Breadbin will always be my favourite computer.
Gunstar Hero's and Comix Zone. Nuff said.
Thank you for mentioning Gunstar Heroes and Batman and Robin, because these are the games that come to mind when I think of the Mega Drive going to the next level.
The megadrive will always be my fav console of all time
Mine, too. I’ve still got my original plus games. Just love it.
Batman and Robin is by far the most impressive game. Too difficult to be fun, but really really impressive
It does a lot of incredible stuff.
But Panorama Cotton really dropped my jaw when I first saw it. And it's paired with a game that's actually fun to play (Unlike Batman and Robin which, like you said, it's just too stupidly hard to be any fun).
Adventure of batman and Robin is one of my all time favorite games. My bro and I ace it once a yr.🤯🤟🏻💯
Awesome video. Panorama Cotton has always absolutely blown me away, honestly it's more impressive every time I see it. Great info!
The first time I played Contra: Hard Corps. back in the day I was completely blown away by the graphics and the music.
It was my first game on Genesis. Just imagine the sheer speed the game had in comparison to stupidly slow NES. That techno music (sure SNES had more realistic sound and better visuals, but fuck that crap it was 90s, techno and rave is all we needed in our teens and genesis was so fucking fast, everything was RADICAL lol). Genesis was peak 90s, that's for sure.
I am a programmer.
The thing is, I can see how all effects on Contra Hard Corps are done. Lots of well thought stuff, but nothing that really "pushes" the hardware. And yeah, very good pixel art.
Red Zone is doing some insanely smart stuff, as it is Toy Story, DN3D , Batman & Robin and Bloodshot.
But hell, first time I saw Panorama Cotton, I was like "HOW THE FUCK THEY PULLED THAT OFF?" There are stuff on that game that I still don't know how it works.
@@rafaellima83 I think Panorama Cotton is using pretty much every pseudo 3D optical illusion in the book. Everything from the checkerboard tiles to the waving effect from different horizontal lines being offset from one another to make it look like the tunnel you are in is curving. Many of these effects are used on games dating back to even the 8-bit systems.
Awesome video! Love the content you create. That Kawasaki game blew me away! Amazing the 3D is running that smooth without any special hardware.
19:25 Yes, it was official. Tectoy were masters of getting IPs.
They produced the game first and then got the IP
And, iirc, then it was discovered that the who gave license to TecToy for Duke Nukem 3D lost part of the rights to Duke Nukem, so it's debatable if it's official
I'm blown away by Kawasaki Superbike Challenge! That looks better than Virtua Racing to me, or at least smoother...
It’s smoother for two reasons. It’s pushing a lot less polygons and also you can’t turn around in it. It just slides left and right like the other outrun style games.
Even though it had a chip, Virtua racing is doing a lot more than Kawasaki or F1 did.
@@sloppynyuszi I didnt play a Lot of Kawasaki Superbike, but my First impression of It was "Oh, its vroom with motorbikes."
If its indeed like Vroom its mixing 2D sprites with vector graphics. Thats why It feels theres more stuff than VR and also why you cant turn around.
@@rafaellima83 Vector graphics, are you sure? Those look like polygons to me. Vector graphics are basically just lines that are lengthened and shortened to give a pseudo 3D effect. Old arcade games like Battle Zone and Star Wars used vector graphics.
@@davidaitken8503 Yeah, sorry, you are right. Polygons , not vectors :D
Also:
Vectorman
Vectorman 2
Adventures of Batman and Robin
Sonic 3D Blast
All these four together with Toy Story are my Top 5 that really push the limits of Mega Drive..
Jarrasic Park 1997 also
3:19 Even though the machine can technically only do 2 main background layers, the fact you can take some parts from one layer and move it either forward or behind the other layer really means you can do far more properly overlapping layers that would first seem to be the case. I think the SNES can actually do this too, but I can probably count the number of games on my hand where the SNES did anything beyond just using say the three background layers with maybe a bit of simple line scrolling if lucky. I wish more developers did this kind of trickery, because it actually seems to be a pretty standard capability of both consoles from what I've read, yet rarely fully utilised.
Makes you wonder why they didn't... Like I'm genuinely curious.
Love this series my guy, thanks for all of the awesome content.
To this day, I'm still very overwhelmed by what the Megadrive is towards the end. Partially out of the Sega box. Comic Zone, Sonic 3 and Nuggels, Turtels Hyperstone, Probotector and Castel Vaniar. Class Console. I had a nice time with the Megadrive and the SNES. Both damn good systems with before and disadvantages
I really think some really outstanding programming went into those consoles to get much more out of them than was ever initially intended, even before the Super FX and the 32x.
Love Sonic 3 and Nuggels.
Yeah! I think the Sega Mega Drive was a great and versatile system for its time. I happened to find one for $5AU at a local Charity Shop, and it's worth every cent, especially for technology that's around three decades old.
@@craigdavidson5613 You've made a damn good deal, usually you pay around 25 euros with cables and 1 controller. Only if you are lucky.
Lovely stuff, enjoyed it! There's something very magical about the MD and it's games, I think
Awesome overview of the technologies (and amazing ideas) contained within these games!
Sega really should have picked up the rights to the F1 Challenge game and released it as a third Super Monaco game.
But no Jimmy White's Snooker Sharpie??? Blasphemy!
Steve interestign Davis on the megadrive? Sure you aren't thinking of Jimmy White's titular Whirlwind title?
@@Idelacio thats the one!
Love your channel
Yea my friend had super monaco gp I used to borrow it all the time
@Erbkaiser Unfortunate isn't it
Wasn't expecting the random series of prog rock references and I loved every second of it
Thanks!
Yes, it's true that "Mega Drive" was already a taken name in the States, but it wasn't a laxative; it was held by Mega Drive Systems, Inc., a storage media manufacturer. So, SEGA went with "Genesis" as a way of suggesting that the new console would mark the real dawn of home video gaming.
Really enjoyable videos mate, i've been loving this series. Keep up the good work sir.
The thing that bugs me when I see how they did Red Zone on Genesis--extremely cool by the way--was the fact the main background rotation effect is done by default on SNES relatively easily and with far, far more detail and colour being possible, so all the SNES had to do on top to achieve a similar but presumably even more impressive effect would be to use all it's sprites for the fake 3D objects in the same way the Genesis did.
I mean, the SNES would likely struggle to throw quite as many sprites around like this without slowdown, but if some designer/programmer had maybe combined slightly less sprites with a far, far more detailed Mode 7 image that maybe even baked some shadows and the like into it too, then surely the SNES could have done something like this that actually looked even more striking. A lot of the details of those 3D objects done with sprites on Genesis could have been baked into the Mode 7 background on SNES, such as some of the bushes, or other basically flat objects like ditches and roads/tracks and mud and grass details could be added too, and even the first layer of all the 3D objects as well, saving quite a few sprites right there alone. And the SNES could have even used some transparency on some of the sprites for whatever potentially cool effects too.
But, alas, I don't think I've seen many if any Mode 7 levels on SNES that go for this kind of optical illusion 3D approach. What a shame, because the flat Mode 7 can be impressive enough even as is, but with a bunch of sprites used to build up some of the geometry to look pseudo 3D, it could have been something very special for its time.
The same is surely true of the inside sections too, where the SNES having up to 4 independently scrolling and overlapping background layers probably could have really helped with the effect alongside some sprites to clean the edges. And, again, the SNES having more colours [certainly if less layers were used] and proper transparency could have added even more visual flair if used properly too.
Amiga and C64 scene coders for sure where the masters of optimization and innovation. If today's average game developer had just half their skill and motivation, games would already look like as being played on the Playstation 7 right now!
As a Kid from the early 80's I was absolute fascinated from Parallax-Scrolling!
There's a bunch of videos that claim to list games that "Push the limits of the Mega Drive" but this is the only one that actually explains what's impressive about each one.
3:58 The implementation is just STUNNING! Wow, what an excellent job!!!
Great analysis of the technical work being done in these game. Thanks!
Love this series! Great that uou show and explain the tech side!
My favorite youtube series so far :)
The only time recommended videos gave you something good to watch. I subbed!
Megesis? I like it! 🤣
Amazing documentary, truly breathtaking channel. Thank you so much Sir.
Glad you enjoyed it!
Thanks for the explanation on the Ranger X fake 3D effect, it's so well done. For the real 3D polygon animations, weren't they quite easily doable for the console, simply because wireframe is less power-hungry than flat shading to start with?
Panorama cotton blows many snes games out of the water, it simply puts games such as f zero into shame in the graphical department.
Bwa, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! You're hilarious. Panorama Cotton uses a host of "optical illusions" that have been used in countless games including some for the Turbo Grafx 16 and even the original NES. While it is certainly cool how it switches them up so frequently nothing it is doing is as graphically impressive as the smooth scaling, rich colors, visual design, and color gradients that give a sense of depth found in F-Zero. Where do people like you come up with such ridiculous claims?
@@davidaitken8503 Doesn't matter how they did it... that it's just "illusions", etc. The game looks more impressive, busy and varied in its "3D" effects than the flat background rotation of F-Zero. Show any person the two games side by side for a minute and see what they think.
@@Prizrak-hv6qk You show anyone Panorama Cotton and they will say, "Cool. This is definitely an impressive step up from Space Harrier and 3D World Runner". You show someone F-Zero though, and their jaws would drop to the floor as they had never seen anything, and I mean anything like it before. A silky smooth "3D" looking futuristic racer where you traveled at speeds that no game had ever let you travel before. It really was like peering into the future. I know this was the reaction people had because I was gaming back then and people were absolutely floored when they actually saw the game in motion. Remember, there was no internet back then so many of us had only seen screen shots in magazines. When footage started appearing in TV ads it really made an impact.
You also have to remember that Panorama Cotton not only never made it out of Japan back when it was cutting edge console technology, but it came out after more genuinely 3D games like Star Fox as well. I will personally always love good Japanese sprite work over chunky polygons but Star Fox definitely looked more high tech at the time too.
Great video as always! I'd nominate The Lost World game - its deceptively simple to begin with when you first start playing, with a similar top down perspective to the SNES JP game... but there are multiple 3D sprite scaled showpiece levels as the game progresses which are truly impressive - I'd go so far as to say more impressive 3d effects potentially than even Panorama Cotton? They look more like an early 32 bit game than a Megasis title.
I laughed my ass off at the end of this video, top stuff. Your channel is amazing and one of my favorite unexpected finds in recent memory. Love me some hardware pushing games and you break things down in an intricate, yet accessible manner with great delivery to boot. Keep up the great work!
Great to see a new video in this series. Great to see Ranger get some love, an incredible game that too few people have enjoyed.
Simply incredible! It's stuff like this that made me appreciate the older consoles like the Sega Genesis and turned me into a retro gamer. Great list! Glad to say I have most of these games but this time, unlike my less knowledgeable younger self, I will not be selling my collection this time around to "upgrade" to the newer hardware. Plus, you will never need an internet connection to play these games.
Malcolmmar
Tbf 95% of todays games don't need a Internet connection to be played. Obviously you need 1 to be able to play online multiplayer but that goes without saying.
@@RetroGamesBoy78 I hope you are right. Every time I power up my Xbox One X it goes online to check to see if my account is valid even before I play my game. When games were complete on cart with no internet you just power on and play. Even disc games are not played on disc but have to be downloaded to play. I miss the days of true physical media.
@@malcolmar yeah I forgot about the whole Microsoft thing! Just turn your Internet off and try to play a game, then you'll know!
Awesome vid mate good to see you're on the mend 🙂
thanks for this video. Sooo interesting to see what is going on in the 'background'
with your input i never found anywhere else, definitely subscribed and bell notified.
You started with Ranger X and I was thinking that you basically blew your load right at the start...then I saw the rest of the video. I was aware of the games you showed, but the breakdown was really incredible.
The Sega Alan Parsons Project 😅 Another uniquely brilliant video, I don't quite have the brain to follow the technical bits but really enjoy the idea of uncovering how these genius programmers found ways to do things. I wish I'd seen these 3D racing games back then, I somehow missed them aside from Road Rash. Some of these look incredible, that last one is a work of art!
Red Zone is one of those games that I love even though I suck at it. It is really tough, but it does impress.
Great video. The opening for the Sonic 3D Blast I also consider a well done too.
This channel is great, hell Larry Bundy is a fan! Sub numbers are criminal, proud to be one of the first 10k!
Love the enthousiasm in the video
Panorama Cotton looks awesome! I really like your joke / trivia ratio!
Loved the Genesis stuff at the end but what's really funny/cool is that because it was the Genesis, when Mortal Kombat 1 came out and a code was needed to turn on the gore, because the peeps at Midway were Genesis (the band) fans, they decided to make the blood code A, B, A, C , A, B, B because ABACABB (pronounced Aaah-buh-cab) was also the name of an album that was released by....you guessed it, Genesis (the band).
Brilliant observation
knew i wasnt crazy but Red Zone and Ranger X blew my mind back then on Sega Channel, always wondered at the miraculous stuff those games were doing back then at least for me : D red zone and the real time smoke effects still impress
I've shown ranger x to people and they think it's a early Playstation One game 😂
Megasis is now a thing.
I approve.
I'm actually surprised no one had thought of it before, but this is brilliant.
It'll always be the Genedrive to me.
Megasis sounds....
Mega sissy 😅
Time to get a time machine for 1987-88 to tell Sega management. Don't forget the hairspray and Depeche Mode cassette before you go.
@@twiff3rino28 They're more into prog rock.
this was such a great video i really enjoyed it!
1:48 Actually it is a pretty good analogy. Tiles in both cases are pre-defined, flat blocks with set dimensions that can be spread across a surface in a (usually rectangular) grid pattern. In fact, I always just assumed that analogy was what gave graphics tiles their name.
In more cases than you realize the verbiage is correct and the failure is our education systems.
Fab video 👌 underrated channel!
Glad you think so!
You are legend
I’m Gonna Subscribe.
This Is Tight.
I haven't finished the video but Ranger X I've never heard of. My jaw was on the floor when I saw that a game like that existed back then. It looks outstanding.
I have just known this channel. Good works! Great!
Playing Panorama Cotton on real Genesis is a real treat and so fun, I can attest to that! 😄
Superb video. Pleased to say I own most of these including Panorama Cotton (plus that tea cup).
Hang on to Panorama Cotton its not going to get any cheaper!
Changing the scroll registers during the h blank interrupts is probably how the cotton effects were done. It’s been a while tho so I could be misremembering. Great vid tho.
Treasure did some gems too. Gun star had that reactor room boss. Even the rotating column effect in mcdonaldland
Sonic also couldn’t be done in the snes. They tried with that unicycle game but had to sacrifice backgrounds. Hardware DMA FTW
the Wolfenstein demo on the megadrive is really impressive.
The first level of Ranger X has a parallax effect not seen often. Most of the time we see lines being scrolled at different speed and that's it. But if you look closely, you will see that buildings overlap on the lines behind them. This is not seen often in games from that era.
I love all your names for the console lol
Love these videos jeep up the great work
Sago Mega Pudding? I almost fell off my chair, very funny my friend.. Great documentary...
man, I love your content so much
Glad to see bloodshot. I honestly think this has been quite the overlooked game when it comes to Mega Drive system pushers on these retro channels. I had this when it was out. Graphically impressive, but navigating out of. Level after you beat a boss practically kills it.
Very enjoyable video, cheers!
Wonderful. Loved the shout-out to gamehut
Legend has it that Peter Gabriel quit due to the choice of releasing the game pad with only 3 action buttons
That’s not legend, but common knowledge
Yeah. Mostly, the Genidrive hardware design is a masterpiece of smart minmaxing, but I do think they were wrong about the joystick ports. Because, sure, I can see why they'd want to stick with the old 9-pin D connectors. They'd been used for joysticks back to the Atari 2600 and were dirt cheap. But that limited the pad to 8 inputs, which could be really restrictive for game designers - a problem made MUCH worse when the SNES launched with its 12-input controller and could handle much more complicated controls.
@@jasonblalock4429 well, sharing some hardware parts with the old master system would squeeze down the manufacturing cost, so they thought "why not" obviously
Also its got 3 action button while other systems of the era like the pc engine and amiga still got 2, and at least it fits much better in your hands than the snes controller does to compensate for the lack of buttons. The Dpad is better too. SNES was launched 2 years late.
It took me a minute to get the joke. Lol
@@aboriginalmang The SNES controller fits in my hands just fine AND it has more buttons. The 3 button controller was the single biggest limitation of the Genesis and the big reason SNES games had better play mechanics and more depth in general.
Ranger X
Alien Soldier
Gunstar Heroes
Thunderforce IV they nailed it in the graphics and gameplay department
9:40 Sorry to be 'that guy' but SNES Mode 7 could *not* rotate sprites. That's one of the biggest misconceptions about it. Mode 7 only scaled/rotated background layers. Even in situations where it looks like a sprite rotating, like Bowser's clown-copter at the end of SMW, it's still just clever use of a background.
I think Jimmy White's Snooker 'Whirlwind' deserved an honorable mention on this list.
For a 1990 game, Star Cruiser is a graphic beast with real 3D polygons, awesome music and colorful graphics.
And a whopping 5fps
Jokes aside it's marvelous and not very good at the same time
I would 100% watch a whole video on Cotton. Also I want to know more about how they did that Duke Nukem game. Never seen that vertical line thing. I’d love to know more details
@@themeangene How does it do a vertical interrupt? I know it's barely possible on the systems I know more about (NES & SNES)
Kawasaki Superbike Challenge also looks very similar to Super Monaco GP. I played that so much as a teenager. I recently revived my console setup, and bought Virtua Racer for only £25. It's cheap now, but apparently it retailed for £80 back when that was over a month's pocket money! That's probably why we didn't see any other SVP carts. That and the 32X was on it's way.
What about that sweet, sweet scaling in Ranger X? That was said to be an impossible task on the Genesis and yet it did it through software.
I was more snes than Sega MD, (albeit a fan of the 8 bits GG and SM) but you really show off some good titles on.the Sega MD machine here.
Adding to list is Light Crusader, Toy story, vectorman 1 & 2, Mega Turrican, pocahontas, wrestlemania arcade (Best Digital Sprite based games and mk3 after) yuyu hakusho: battle to unite the demon plane and Dynamite Headdy.
Res-Q's bonus sections are similar to Starfox, although more barebones since it's on the stock Genesis. Another good one is Star Cruiser, a really early 3D game from 1990 on the Genesis as well. Alien Soldier of course, with it's insane sprite manipulation.
You missed an interesting detail too for Kawasaki Superbike Challenge. Check out the windshield on the bike. Genesis can't do transparency, but there it is being done.
3:50 Actually each line of the Megadrive's screen can be given an offset, ie horizontally scrolled, without needing INTs or software. So no processing power needed.
Yes! Another great video in my fave series 😀
Thanks!
Underrated Channel. Incase you ever run out of console, i will suggestl you cover 10+ yo PCs, which were so often sold, they could considered a benchmark and do Games That Push the limits series on those.
Red Zone looks a lot like the 1993 Amiga game Seek and Destroy which has pretty similar rotating background effect and it's also a top down helicopter Desert Strike type of game.
Great video subbed
Aweosome video!! Thank you!
You are so welcome!
Great video! Really good explanations. I was wondering if you've looked at Overdrive 2? Lots of nintendon't in that one 🙃
Or MD-NICCC vs SNES-NICCC for a 1:1 comparison! TITAN, now those guys im convinced are actual wizards! My jaw dropped when i saw Overdrive II live at Revision! It was simply put, a masterpiece of coding!
I'm pretty sure Duke 3d is using the vertical lines as a dithering effect. Looking at the tiles in VRAM, you can see that the vertical lines are 1 - are not present in each tile in VRAM, and 2 - are one-pixel wide. On the genesis, graphics are 4-bits per pixel, so only drawing half a byte of graphics would actually be slower than just drawing a whole byte (two pixels) at once. Also, this kind of game (wolf 3d like) draws everything with vertical lines, so it's a free way to get a bit more color out of the system.
Always funs videos to watch.
There is also Star Trader ! A very ambitious game from the PC-98 that was a tile based J RPG entirely in 3D.
For the Genesis conversion, they got rid of the "tile based" system and you are free to walk in a 3D environment which is.. Quite unique ! You can also travel on the solar system and there is a whole scenario too. It's really an incredible game !
Star Trader looks impressive. I'm sorry I missed that one.
Great work, sir
Ranger X should have got a sequel, imagine what they could have done with it being developed for the Sega CD or Saturn, red-book audio all the way with some sprite-scaling included...
I remember finding those games named after jetfighters for the Genesis and my mind being blown by the pseudo-bitmap graphics. To my eyes it looked like real 3D polygonal flatshaded graphics. I could even stomach the 10 FPS in a few of them.
My favorite is comix zone for the variety of background detail and animations.