Great Visual Effects on the Sega Genesis
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 29 ก.ย. 2024
- Parallax, line scrolling, animation, scaling, rotation, and many other visual effects often made 16-bit games stand out, particularly when a game system supposedly couldn't do them in hardware. Here, we look at some games that I personally find very impressive for the Sega Genesis.
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Opening 3D Logo By:
Jan Neves
TH-cam Page - / jan3d
Opening 2D Animation By:
Kevin Bhall
Facebook - / kevin.bhall.14
Episode Notes:
1. All games caught via a Mega SG.
2. If you're in the market for physical games, some of these are still quite affordable.
3. You could always tell when a developer really had some skill. Not only do most of these look great, they also play and sound great too.
4. I had a list of about 30 games when I started. We could definitely do a part 2 and 3 to this if you guys enjoyed it.
5. I played my Genesis well into the life of the Sega Saturn. It's one of my favorite machines of all time, and its library is second to none in overall quality.
6. Like most of the best games, the majority here were system exclusive and appeared on no other hardware of the time.
Sega Genesis will always be my favorite console of all time!
Mine too!! 👌🏽👍🏽💯💯💯
Neo geo and saturn come close
NEO GEO AES IS MINE 😆SO HAAA BWHAHAAA I GOT THAT TOOO
🙏☯️🐲😎
Agreed
Mega Drive was really capable of awesome graphics like in this video, and really capable of good voice effects too. Sometimes I think that developers were lazy sometimes with mega drive voices. Per example some music where better than snes, but not the voices. But games line strider, dynamite headdy, bart's nightmate, Mortal kombat... Had really good sound voices....
Fantastic list. The only one I see missing is Shinobi 3, but bonus points for including its credits theme in your closing statements.
I would also add gunstar heroes
He'll probably show more in a part 2 video.
@@Rohaldos Indeed. But as he said, he could do a whole video on just Treasure games. As far as technical powerhouses go, Alien Storm looks amazing, and if he had to pick one from Treasure's catalog, that's the one I'd go with.
@@LorenHelgeson Alien Soldier you mean friend, and imo, it's the greatest run n gun shooter ever made. At least the most creative
@@retrosoul8770 Yes, I meant Alien Soldier. And to be honest, I actually do not like Alien Storm at all, so that's a bad goof on my part.
Do it! Do it! Another list please! This was a lot of fun to watch!
Love your „Great Visual Effects on the Sega Genesis“ series! Suggestions for Part 4: Skitchin‘ (amazing sprite scaling), Chuck Rock 2 (burning tree & dinosaur climb), Dynamite Headdy, F-22 Interceptor, Star Cruiser (dogfights, Intro, mazes & towns), Greatest Heavyweights (ring & audience „rotation“), The Lawnmower Man („polygonal“ stages & Space Harrier-style stages), Out Run 2019 (overhead highways & racing through forest sections), Battle Mania 2 (stage 6), Shinobi III, Sub-Terrania (dive into water, last boss), Earthworm Jim 1 (stage 3) & EJ 2, Ecco The Tides of Time (Tube of Medusa), Virtua Figter 2 (3d-ish floors), Pier Solar (over-world map on dragon), ResQ 3d bonus stage, G-zero, Starfox 3d tech demos, TiTAN Overdrive 1&2!
Phantasy Star was doing 3-D hallways on the Sega Master System.
Untill today not finished playing and still completing genesis games for the first time....also the reason I dont need a new console for a long time coming (untill the switch gets properly hacked, that is)
You ever consider doing a team up with Joe/Game Sack?
How did they do that 3D effect in Ranger X. It’s not polygons right?
nope, it's a clever technique called Scroll Parallax, all is in 2D, they move/arrange the sprites creating that visual trick. The floor on Street Fighter II used this trick. the only polygon game on Genesis is Virtua Racing.
Ranger X is severely underrated.
One of the really impressive things about that game was the strange trickery they used to make the color palette seem much deeper than the Sega should have been capable of. That and it was just a cool game in general, with a great soundtrack. It really was ahead of it's time.
@@knightshousegames It looks like there are more colors on screen just in some areas that use the Shadow and Highlight mode on the Genesis (Like in the cave or the Forest stage) but the whole game just use the regular 61 colors, the difference is that the color palettes are well implemented. Here's a video that does a color count on each screen in the game and you can tell it's always on the limits. th-cam.com/video/7_9S7tgeeIo/w-d-xo.html
That game is unreal!
Look at the line up of games the developer ended up making, and it’s no surprise they were able to pull this off.
Agreed. I champion its virtues any chance I get! Not only is it a good looker, but it's great to play as well; I've finished that game so many times, and I still love going back to it.
Rocket knight adventures was a mecca of gorgeous sprites and effects.
my favorite Megadrive game. Just perfect
I use to love this damn game
Extremely catchy music too. That eerie boss theme is one of the best 16 bit tracks ever
SLX: Thunder Force IV is one of the most impressive looking and sounding games in the entire library
Sega Genesis Mini: Here, have Thunder Force III
LMAO, if anything its because TFIII is arguably the most popular entry of the series and one of the most accessible Genesis shmups. If it meant that Sega would be bringing over its inane "Lightening Force" translation of the game then I think it was for the best. Boneheaded decision even back in 1992. I never knew it was TFIV when I picked it up from Software Etc way back when for cheap until I turned on the game.
Sega had just released 4 on the Switch, so I was glad they went for a different game on the Mini. 3 is no slouch in the graphics department either.
3 is really good too. Probably more well known. Sold a ton of copies. I didn't even know there was a 4.
@@GLPitt1 Then you'll be really surprised that there's a Thunder Force 6.
@@japanimationman4442 Lots of Thunder Force I guess.
Some of the games on the Sega Genesis were pretty impressive at the time and still impressive to this day. Castlevania Bloodlines, Contra Hard Corps, Gunstar Heroes, Thunder Force 4 to name a few with amazing 2D effects and audio. Thanks for the video Sega Lord X
Vectorman games? Sonic 3D Blast?
@@ErronBlack_Outlaw Sorry didn't wanna seem like I was forcing them down your throat. Besides it's all subjective anyway.
@@AmbientMess aye, Vector Piece Animation
hey guys! what's the game at 0:43? I've never heard of it!
The Genesis version of Aladdin had great looking animation as well.
Oh yes, the Sega Genesis was a very capable machine. The first year that the Genesis was available it was doing things that we once thought were impossible for a home console. Ghouls N' Ghosts absolutely blew our collective minds when it dropped. Golden Axe was another stand out launch title that floored us. Strider was yet another launch window title that showed the Sega Genesis's chops. I became a proud Genesis owner in 1989 and it never failed to amaze me. Even when I got my Snes in 1991...I always preferred my Genesis.
In my opinion, Thunder Force IV was the true pinnacle of 16-bit perfection. It showed what the Genesis was capable of. The massive amounts of sprites flying at you, the scaling effects of the incoming shots from the foreground, sound to die for, insane amounts of parallax scrolling, the extended playing field were just some of the things that made it a true stand out. Thunder Force IV would not look out of place on the Neo Geo MVS/AES and stands as a true tour de force for the generation.
I'm weird.
I still think that "The Revenge of Shinobi" looks too good to be an early release game for the system. (1989?)
@Ricardo Stefan all my friends have no qualms about divulging their social media passwords to one another. we trust each other like a family
One more lesson about Sega. I'm really into that since I got my Mega Drive mini.
What are ure favourite games on the mini.
@@martymartin2894 Gun Star Heroes. But I haven't played all games yet.
Man... I wish Panorama Cotton had an arcade version. Even the Genesis version looks like Space Harrier on steroids
They did an amazing and better job scaling/rotating sprites than sega ever did with genesis including some of the sega cd games like sonic cd special stage.
Success made Cotton in '89, Cotton 2 in '97 & Cotton Boomerang in '98
I wish it was affordable
@@BBfanfun I had no idea about Cotton Boomerang, thanks for the heads up!
Mega Drive was impressive! And really, kudos for Traveller's Tales in their Toy Story game, that thing was impressive
Gunstar Heroes and Dynamite Headdy deserved to be on that video too. They both look like SNES games right down to the colors and sprite effects.
You forgot the 3d wireframes at the beginning of each stage in Ranger-X
I genuinely did forget. I meant to add a piece in there about it.
@@SegaLordX Waiting for a second part! I love your videos! Cheers from a sega fan from Brazil!
@@dijabreu TecToy ruls forevermore
@@leonidaschryssinas1723 Hey thanks mate! Tec Toy was a great Sega partner. But to tell you the truth, my mega drive is a japanese model 1, still in pristine condition, converted to pal and play north america games. I still have some of my games: Ecco, the immortal, chakan, Sword of Vermillion...
Hey, Can you make a video on Great Visual Effects on Sega Saturn? I've been recently programming homebrew stuff on Saturn and I'm curious to see what others think are cool effects on Saturn.
He did do something similar.
th-cam.com/video/4avFm83jkgo/w-d-xo.html
It’s in the planning stages now.
That's interesting. What kind of things have you programmed for the Saturn so far?
Check out the channel GameHut. It's a game programmer who worked on Saturn games back in the day describing some of the tricks and limitations on the platform. He also programmed Toy Story, mentioned in this video.
To this day Panorama Cotton still amazes me.
I love how almost all the games in this video not only had amazing visual effects but incredible soundtracks to accompany them
The Genesis is like a Bob Ross painting. A relatively limited pallet but still able to produce some amazing things.
And there is a Bob Ross game on the Genesis!
Genesis was a boss system. Great video as always.
You're definitely gonna need a part 2, 3, 4 etc. Of this series. Genesis had some great looking games.
No it didn't.
64 color is a quarter of 256. Hehe 2.5d
Hello decent snes.
Member when true color images didn't matter?
Me neither.😂
Like gradient? Vote Sintendo.
The majority of its games used a resolution of 320x224. Much different from its competitor that used a resolution of 256x224 for most of the games. It means that Mega Drive used 14 thousand more pixels.
The way I see it, multiplat games look better on snes thanks to the additional colors, but usually play better on genesis thanks to the higher resolution (more screen space) and faster processor.
I grew up with Snes. Bought 2 mega drive this week. I love snes, but i start loving megadrive to. In my opinion snes have more beautiful games, but megadrive have impressive games to.
@@sandroribeiro9491 I had both but the megadrive was always better in my opinion,as a matter of fact take a look at Earthworm Jim the better version is on the megadrive. People didn't realize how powerful the megadrive is! The only game I gave nintendo credibility in was starfox!
@@eskanda3434 The Mega Drive used four palettes of 16 colours, however the first entry of each is transparent (with one being used as the background colour) and thus the same (so 15+15+15+15+1). Shadow/highlight can enhance the number significantly, increasing the palette threefold in theory, however this doesn't account for duplication, and some of the resulting shades might not be suitable for the output you're wanting to achieve. Additionally, depending on what palette is used for what task, the same colour can crop up multiple times, so your unique colour count is actually lower still.
@Dean Satan
What a load of bull. Look at the genesis version of any multiplatform game available on both systems and you can clearly see how it suffers due to lack of color.
I have always felt that Thunder Force 4 (I own it as Lightening Force) was one of the best looking, best sounding, and best playing games the Genesis ever had. I'm an RPG guy, but outside of that genre I would probably call Thunder Force 4 the best game on the system. Cool to see it showcased here.
fun fact: half of these games would look even BETTER over a COMPOSITE video cable. The video output encoder chip on the Genesis/MD had a strange processing quirk where it would blend adjacent columns of pixels, and many developers/programmers in the latter half of the console's life-cycle deliberately took advantage of this for higher on-screen colors, pseudo-transparencies, and anti-aliasing effects. Earthworm Jim, Vectorman, Socket, and Comix Zone are quick examples, but plenty of other games, and even earlier titles which often employed a checkerboard mesh style of shading/transparency, benefit from this phenomenon.
There are still caveats to the composite video output (most common are the "jailbars" and rainbow-banding effects, both of which are completely fixed when utilizing the composite output from a 32x), and simply blurring the RGB/SCART output will NOT reproduce the same effect... but if you have both a CRT and a Genesis that doesn't suffer from extreme rainbow-banding (or you also have a 32x connected), then you should grab your pack-in composite cable, adjust your TV's picture settings, and play some of the later Genesis' library the way it was intended to be seen.
its not a quirk at all, nothing crazy, its called dithering.
Honestly the effects and graphics outdo the SNES by a good margin
Edit: Jeez you guys calm down, it was just my opinion
@HUB GOBLIN Disney games are a PURE example.
@@TheGemini5 Like Castle of Illusion
Yea sure 🙄
@@TheGemini5 Apples to oranges. The early Disney games for Genesis were mostly first party published on Genesis (Castle of Illusion, Quackshot) or produced by different studios than their SNES counterparts (Aladdin). This makes direct comparison with these games difficult as either an SNES version of the same game doesn't exist or the games were intentionally different since they were made by two different studios. If you want to directly compare Genesis to SNES you have to use games that were done by the same publisher for both systems. (SFII, MK, Madden, etc.), that's where the differences can be measured.
@The Deadpool Who Chuckles. From a technical standpoint, the SNES could do everything that the Genesis could. But the Genesis could not do everything that the SNES could. The only objective thing that the Genesis had as an advantage was that it's CPU ran at a higher clock speed and that's it's CPU was a very well known commodity and developers already had plenty of experience with it by the time Genesis came out. The SNES had hardware level support for it's effects and larger color palette. The CPU didn't have to handle the "special effects". With the Genesis, programmers could sorta-kinda fake some of the effects but the CPU had to render them in software, which carries a high cost from a CPU utilization standpoint, but as I mentioned before the 68000 in the Genesis ran at a higher clock speed anyway, and developers were already well versed in how to leverage it's capabilities.
Konami's efforts on the Megadrive towards the end of the generation really made me rethink what I considered then the superiority of the SNES. The graphical effects on Contra and Castlevania absolutely blew me away. To this day I prefer Castlevania Bloodlines to SCV4.
Super Castlevania 4 has better graphics and music. But Bloodlines is more interesting and harder gameplay. Some cool 3 D effects too.
A second and third part about this topic should be great fun to cover, so yes please, looking forward to them :). Have a good one, Sega Lord X!
Ranger X not only looks great, it plays so incredibly tight and unlike any other game for the platform
The SNES needed Super FX and DSP chips in the cartridges to pull off its tricks for its best games. Even Super Mario Kart used a DSP chip. Apart from the one SVP game, the MD relied solely on its base hardware.
@TrueSinister Yeah bad move imo, Nintendo's add on chips method was better it seems.
If you were to compare MD vs SNES games, you wouldn't throw in Mega CD and 32X games as that wouldn't be a fair comparison but people do throw in Super FX games.
@Shawn Macdonald The Mega CD and 32X pulled off games that were nigh on impossible on the SNES in their short lifespans.
@Dean Satan only 75 snes games used extra chips. This was not a covert attempt to "cheat" on the part of the snes. Nintendo decided during design that rather then use a robust cpu like the Genesis, they would instead use a more basic cpu and focus on an immersive audio and visual presentation with their apu and vpu. If Nintendo included a similar processor as the Genesis, it would have put it's price up beyond the price point they were aiming at during launch. With the additional chips, nintendo was afforded the flexibility to increase the horsepower needed in order to run the latest and greatest as software evolved. That's part what made the 2 consoles great and unique to themselves and why many consider the 4th gen the golden age of 2d gaming.
I never really began my gaming adventure until the 32bit machines (cue a long story about finding a Virtua Racing Twin Sit Down at a service station in the middle of the night after a Rave and me becoming a hero by throwing it into freeplay simply by following the power lead and switching it off then on again. About eight of us played that thing until the sun came up, an absolute storming night and an epiphany of what video games could be). Anyway, I tried a few games after that night, Indy 500 on my sister's Amiga for one, it didn't cut it. When I saw Starfox pushing flat shaded polys on the SNES I decided to get myself one. It was fun but still not the mind trip I wanted, that wouldn't be until I imported my JPN PS1 and a copy of Ridge Racer. Having owned the SNES for a short time and being new to gaming I took it as read that it kicked the MD's arse. Jump forward almost 30 years and watching channels such as SLX's and I'm getting schooled on just how incredible the MD was. Some of these games look beyond what even the SNES could do, to me anyway. I actually think it has the more attractive software over all. Something I'd have thought ridiculous back in the day. Still think the SNES is shit hot mind. I've gathered up several of these little retro mini consoles and I'm loading them up with some of the superb looking classics I'm being shown here etc and enjoying games I missed the first time round. Cheers SLX.
This video alone is one of the many reasons I loved the Sega Genesis way more than the Super Nintendo
@Dean Satan
I had only played a handful of Genesis games back in the day, including Revenge of Shinobi, Ranger X, Batman and Robin (never made it past the first level), and the Sonic games, but I prefer the SNES by a mile even now that I've had a chance to try out more Genesis games. I'm so glad I had a SNES and not a Genesis back then. Most of the Genesis library is straight up arcade style action, while the SNES is the opposite, with more adventure elements. The SNES has more compelling games that you would want to marathon by yourself for days on end to see to completion while the genesis has more games that are only fun in 15 minute bursts if you have a friend watching.
And also I might add, NO SLOW DOWNS ON the first two games you show. ThunderForce 4 has 0 slowdowns.!!!
The Road Rash games had very impressive scaling for the time, also Ecco tides of time had a few nifty graphical effects with scaling etc
Road Rash may be the only Genesis game that truly scales.
The rest are just clever in throwing a bunch of individually drawn sprite sizes to give the effect.
As where Road Rash actually scales, giving it the most depth.
If you drive slow anyone can see there's way too many sizes of each sprite to have been re-drawn each frame.
Thing is ppl would never know because of its choppy framerate.
The other games "that don't actually scale" all have smooth framerates, but their animation is choppy.
As where Road Rash the animation is smooth but the framerate is choppy.
Trade off was worth it because once you get over the framerate, Road Rash has a fluid feel.
@@Lightblue2222 Sonic 3 has some rather impressive scaling. Even if we ignore the blue spheres bonus level, the boss fight in Marble Garden Act 2 where Robotnik zooms off into the background is pretty neat. Even if none of this is real, it still uses a lot of frames to achieve a realistic effect, though the cartridge size is pretty large for the time.
@Daishin no Dōro It's never jerky though, which is impressive - there's a stable frame rate.
Road rash is awesome. It's most certainly a 2D-programmed game that they incredibly managed to present to the player in a 3D perspective that worked surprisingly well. I'm not too sure that it is actually scaling though. I could be wrong.
I wish more people covered Vectorman, it's my favorite Genesis game, but I can't critique it myself because I've played it a million times and know where most things are, I would like to hear someone else's opinion on it
@Ilja Permiakov yeah I felt the pacing was way worse in the sequel, and it didn't have the same graphical flare, you're just fighting generic bugs
I recently testet my Sega Mega Drive on a Big HD TV and i must say that the picture quality is way better than SNES.
Thank you for that great show
Interesting to hear that. How so?
@@eskanda3434 probably to so with its internal resolution which scales better on modern TVs. The snes ran at a lower resolution. Dont get me wrong, I didnt own a genesis, I was snes and master system back then. In the uk we had scart cables. My ps1 with rgb scart cables gives pristine picture on my modern tv.
@@scatalabad Could be because of square pixels, a few games even look good streched to 16:9 such as earthworm jim.
@@eskanda3434 He was saying the picture quality was better, not which could have more colours on screen.
The MegaDrive could do 4096 on screen at the same time so you was saying...
Finally someone who gives some credit to that awesome game Mega Turrican was/is. I know this was about graphics but what Chris Huelsbeck did in terms of sound and music is also unbelievable. Those drums and baselines were miles ahead of anything I had listened on a home console at the time.
Indeed. Incredible work.
The music in Mega Turrican was awesome. I wish they had used the same title track that was used in the Amiga version, though - it had such a catchy hook!
U mention sum great games here..but u also lef out a few.."Ristar" should be added to this list aswell!!
Ristar is incredible.
One thing I liked about Mega Drive games is the ease with which the hardware seemed to handle things thanks to the CPU. SNES looked much nicer but often felt like it was at its limit, or pushed beyond it. Nintendo really crippled that thing with the weak cpu, if they hadn't skimped the SNES would have been truly unbelievable. It's still fantastic but what could have been.
It wasn't the just the cpu that crippled the snes, it was the rom speed, which affected games performance. Games with the slower LoRom ran the cpu at a lower speed, while HiRom allowed the full cpu speed, plus fasted memory performance. Cpu wise if they clocked the snes cpu at 6 mhz, it would out do genesis, but nintendo wanted nes games to be able to run and that didn't pan out.
@@waterheart95 It's not only the cpu speed, it's the bus depth too. The M68000 had an internal 32bit wide bus and an external true 16bit bus. The snes cpu had an internal 16bit bus and a 8bit external one. Even if their processors were evenly matched in raw power terms, the mega drive/genesis could move the same amount of data around twice as fast. Also, Sega could do with the same cheap rom chips as the LoROM ones in snes' cartridges because the 68k cpu always ran at full speed. In the end, the quality of the coding made the difference, but in the Sega's setup it was much easier to achieve far faster performance, not to mention the 68K cpu had a much more advanced instruction set than the WDC 65C816. Travelers Tales programmer even stated that toy story's "day-toy-na" stage had to be scrapped out of snes version, because it needed an additional DSP chip which would make the game more expensive. The 68k still lives to this day, as embedded microcontrolers (in elevators and other dedicated things) as it's instruction set as well, in IBM's Power ISA, since the the 90's when the AIM (apple, ibm, motorola) consortium was estabilished.
@@dijabreu So basically "Blast Processing" wasn't just a marketing tactic? The MegaDrive really was a little bit faster than the SNES?
@@SammEater Apparently, the term was coined when the programmers tried to explain to the marketing department how the system could access and move around data quickly, due to the greater bus and extremely fast DMA mode.
That SNES cpu was an abomination. It's just an overclocked NES cpu.
The Genesis/MegaDrive had a lightning fast CPU in comparison.
Genesis was pushing polygons in 90..well before the SNES.
Low end microcomputers were beating them both to the punch in the 80s.
@@SomeOrangeCatHell, they were doing basic 3D in the early 70's - granted, it took a LOT of computer power at the time and was just academic experimentation, but computer imagery existed well before the mid to late 90's - th-cam.com/video/T5seU-5U0ms/w-d-xo.html
Did it or was it just a convincing visual effect that mimicked polygons?
@@kekeke8988 Kawasaki Superbike Challenge by DoMark was a TRUE 3D POLYGON game that wasn't awful. It was a derivative of an Amiga/ST Game called Vroom.
@@kekeke8988 There's a game called Star Cruiser that uses actual polygons
Alien Soldier is one of my favorite games of all time. Vectorman and Toy Story were also awesome.
Great video X, Genesis will go down as my second favorite console of all time.
Now I wanna know which is the first...
Amega CD 32
@@DOYLETWAT either ur joking or ur serious. Saturn is my fav console of all time
The Dreamcast is my personal favorite console of all time
@@mrlaidback83 DC is also one of my favs, Saturn 1, DC 2
What always blew my mind was the fact that some of the later 16 bit titles visually blew me away more than most 32/64 bit games did both artistically and technically.
Takes Vectorman 2 , Donkey Kong country 2 , Super Mario world 2 , and Sonic the hedgehog 3 and then go try and find some early 32/64 bit titles that are as impressive visually and it is honestly tough to do.
I would even go so far as to say that looking back now , there are some impressive 16 bit titles from both the genesis and SNES libraries that are not only better games in general but also still hold up better today than many of the 32/64bit titles do. Don't get me wrong I love Final Fantasy 7 , Mario 64 is classic and still awesome. What I am saying is I feel I can find more 16 bit titles that I would rather play now verses some of the 32/64 bit titles.
For instance Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross.I think Chrono Trigger blows chrono cross out of the water. I would rather play final fantasy 6 than part 8 or 9.I would rather play Sonic the hedgehog 3 and knuckles than Sonic racing.
There are some games from the 32/64 bit era that hold up well also but I think the 16 bit era was better and more innovative and they seemed to do more with less and that is also why the mini consoles continue to be popular.
In Soleil (or Crusader of Centy) there is a bossfight with a dragon in heaven. The clouds on the background are still impressive to this day. The game is quite good in the graphical departement overal and one of my most favorite Megadrive games of all time!
I was blown away by the first Sonic the Hedgehog! It was so colorful and fast and animated with great Tunes! Every game I would rent back then would blow me away all over again. Love the Sega Genesis. Thanks for another great show!
*The Japanese copy of SONIC had 3D effects!* 💡
Thinking you left off the "2" at the end. Every time I bought Sonic 2 I got great deal and looks fantastic, noticably better than the first game.
World of Ilusion with Mickey and Donald is an absolute masterpirce.
I've owned or played every console of the 8, 16 and early 32-bit eras, and the Sega Genesis is still my favorite.
Treasure games were awesome. I never got a chance to play any Cotton games. Thunder Force 4 was so good.
There's a port of Wolfenstein on the Genisis. Stock hardware. No joke
Do tell?
@@thetribalist6923 Yeah, you can find the ROM easily enough. There's video here on TH-cam. It's insane. If it was available back in the day I think it would have changed the course of the video game industry
@@jeremygregorio7472 lol sure as hell no
it just one port of a super basic game
Thunderforce 4 impresses me far more than 5 or 6. Love them all but 4 is jaw dropping imo. Something about seeing a system pushed to its absolute limits. Something I don't think we've seen in a long time.
Idk that any Genesis effects episode can't include Zero Tolerance. Mazin Saga character animations too.
Honestly, not only Super Fantasy Zone had fantastic colors ... that Wonder Boy 4 Monster World 3 was like that too. Crazy Colorful.
THANK YOU for including Mega Turrican!! The music was so great too, wasn't it?? ;)
*and surround sound if you had a unit in da living room!*
Huh, I have never heard of "Panorama Cotton" until this very moment. Thanks for these videos. I've always been more of a Nintendo fanboy so a lot of these SEGA titles tend to be stuff I missed, especially during the Saturn and Dreamcast era.
Yea Thunder Force 4 is a masterpiece
please make a video about VIRTUAL RACING AND THE CHIP SVC in the genesis
Ristar
Gunstar Heroes
Ecco: the tides of time
The Lost World
Comix Zone
Virtua Racing
World of illusion
Earthworm Jim
Duke Nuken 3D (BR)
Yes
Killing it with all the AAA content 💪
Not an effect, but that introduction for Sonic 3D Blast that looks crappy nowadays?
Incredible, a technological marvel back then.
Didn't look great, but it sure _felt_ great...!
FMV on the genesis was pretty novel back then. it counts!
Like many old techniques, it looks better on a CRT too.
Travellers tales excelled on a systems from leander on the amiga. Toy story 3 on the megadrive and multi games on the Saturn. They pushed the systems hard and figured new ways to push what the hardware could do
Still a drag we didn't get Cotton over here, just crazy what that game does. Got lucky and picked up that excellent Batman game complete and under market value. Got plenty of FZ in NA but no Super Fantasy Zone, such a mistake SOA.
People are so polarized about Vectorman, my cousin introduced it to me and we played the hell out of both. The color palette selection could have been better but I never had any issue with gameplay mechanics.
Red Zone is still impressive, would love to hear how that works from the developer since I can't even guess with that one. Bless GameHut for actually giving us a look under the hood of his games.
Bimini Run is hard to explain in achievements as other than Miracle Warriors on SMS there aren't many games that combine tilemap construction with voxel like 3D rendering.
Can't go wrong with Turrican, pretty much enjoyed every version, even that Universal Soldier one.
I never really understood why Nintendo fanboys compared Genesis hardware to Sne’s with the whole 2 year gap. I understand their the same generation but 2 years where tech was increasing rapidly back then is just a big difference for me. If anything I give the genesis credit to even hold up it’s on during that time.
@D core whenever ppl say that the cpu was faster and "that's it" or "that's all it had", they don't understand what that actually means.
A faster cpu means more advanced code can run on the system, it means more 3D effects, polygons, smoother animation, more sprites, all sorts of unique/interesting advantages. This video from SLX plus other games vividly illustrate this.
I can't stand when ppl try to mitigate and belittle that, it's major, the cpu is the heart of a system, it's the engine of prime importance, and a significant handicap of Snes.
Given context it makes sense that Snes would sell very well given the NES's success in the states, but yes it had a larger color palette, the mode 7 trick and a controller with superior functionality. The point is, from me anyway is NOT that the Snes is overall terrible, but that the Genesis is alot better than most ppl in the US at least give it credit for (Ign, watchmojo etc) and other mainstream sources that misinform millions of the quality of the hardware and its games.
SLX these are the games that should be on all future Sega Genesis compilations for minis or disc/cart releases. I know licensing is a bunch of drama and everyone wants their cut, but dammit everyone should negotiate and have these games together showing future generations what the Megadrive or Genesis did better than all the competition. These are all solid titles that impressed the hell out of me then and do not disappoint today. Great job and great choice of Cotton Panorama. I wish Outrun on Genesis had been done by that studio.
Imagine more genesis compilation made it to the sega cd with all of the games listed on the video and the comments.
M.U.S.H.A. and Gaiares are hopefully in part 2...
Kawasaki super bike is a game I was impressed with the graphics.
I think Crusade of Centy is one of the best looking games on the system... The color palette looks like it could be a square enix game on SNES. Can anyone tell me what game is at 0:38?
Monster World IV. I believe it was originally a Japanese market release, but has later been made available in some collections and console online stores.
Monster World IV and it’s available in the Sega Genesis Mini!
Misadventures of Flink had some impressive software rotation and scaling. It was only released on cartridge in Europe. Ecco the Delphine 2 used a process called HAM (Hold and Modify) to display 128 onscreen colors. I believe it's the only game to display more then 64 colors on Genesis.
This machine still surprises me to this day. Xeno Crisis is a great example of what can be done as a recent example, and many other fantastic games.
"I never found European developed games to be very appealing" -> this can NOT be serious, or your viewpoint is very distorted indeed...
What are some visually ‘unimpressive’ games on the Genesis? Treja and Double Dragon 2 are one of them. Time Killers (oh god why didn’t the idiots who did this travesty port it to the PS1 instead?) probably has the worst graphics of all Genesis games.
Surprised Ristar did not make your list! Panorama Cotton is very impressive and really showed what the Genesis could do, to bad it costs a fortune along with many of the Cotton games!
senti falta de alguns jogos, mas a lista é muito boa =D
Its quite amazing what they managed to get out of the snes, megadrive/genesis and pc engine/turbo grafx.
Just shows what good programming can do. I also Ike the fact that each console was genuinely different in design which led to unique game libraries.
Today, all consoles are basically streamlined pcs. Of course, developers love this but its less to a standardisation of games. We used to get games uniquely designed for a system.
I'm glad you made this video. Videogame magazines of the day made such a huge deal of the SNES hardware mode 7 and scaling. I loved how great programmers did those effects the Genesis better than anything ever seen on the SNES. Gunstar Heroes is STILL a marvel to this day and Sonic 1's scaling effects in the special zone was done to perfection.
The person talking has no idea about the Snes library. I see these comments all the time. Really time to take off the rose tinted nostalgia glasses.
One of the things I love about the Mega Drive is its purity (for want of a better term). Rarely do the games rely on custom chips and most sound is generated in hard ware rather than samples. For that, I'm happy to forgo an expanded colour palette. :)
Ive grown alot of respect for the genesis after recently buying one and collecting games for it. I really admire its power and how it held up against the super nintendo. Very impressive console
I still have my original copies of all of those games, minus Cotton and Bimini run.
So glad I kept my Megadrive for 30 years!
I still have my SEGA console and lots of originel games too, after all these years. Kept it in a suitcase and still as new 😊👍
Vectorman was my shit as a kid. I loved playing the hell out of it. The graphics were amazing for a console released in the late '80s.
Ranger X, love this game 😍
I feel like the genesis was more impressive than the snes considering it released 3 years earlier and didn't need added chips to run 3d games
The best games has the best visuals .!
I mean there are exceptions.!
But the visually Stunning games are remembered the most
As an Amiga fan going back to the 90s, I think you're wrong about Euro developers. Maybe they didn't make as many good games for consoles, but they put out some impressive stuff on Amiga.
As soon as I saw the title, my brain immediately jumped to _The Adventures of Batman & Robin._
That game is an incredible visual achievement. Glad to see it on the list (of course, you couldn't possibly omit it -- the comment section would have never forgiven you!)
Bro I love this episode people underestimated the genesis back in the day I wish we would’ve gotten more games like this in the beginning the argument about snes and genesis graphics would’ve been a closer battle! But even still Genesis held it’s own pretty well
Dude! I loved Bimini Run! The "Kenji, come in!" thing got old, but yeah, those graphics kept me going back to it time and time again. Now, I've tried Vectorman many times but I just don't get the appeal. Its gameplay is nothing special, the level design is fairly bland, and the graphics, which are supposed to be the amazing feature, just look bland and colorless to me.
same here, i played it soo many times to try to like it. The user interface and gameplay is enjoyable, but just like you said, the color palette turns me off, it's not a bad game, it's an enjoyable game, but couldn't put more love to it. I prefer colorful games like Ristar, Sonic, Dynamite Headdy, McDonalds Treasure Island, High Seas Havoc Captain Lant, Pulse Man, Mickey Mouse series, Joe and Mac, Sunsetriders, Streets of Rage/Bare Knuckle series.
It is amazing what the mighty Mega Drive can pull off despite the lack of additional chips. It would be astounding if they got Doom running on it but it would need to be built from the ground up and compromises will probably need to be made. At least we got a decent homebrew port of Wolfenstein 3D.
Amazing review here, some games look even like early 32 bits games. Thank you so much my Lord!
I was hardcore snes I feel I missed out a lot. I’m looking forward to playing these games
Oh thank you for putting Ranger X in there. underrated
but i gotta say Adventures of Batman & Robin is the hardest game on the console
Several years back someone ported episode one of Wolfenstein 3D to the genesis. It runs at a smoother framerate than the SNES version. That shows that the Genesis can easily do scaling, rotation and zooming effects with ease.
What? No Alex Kidd In The Enchanted Castle? What kind of a sham is this?
thunder force, now that is probably the most impressive game on the system.
Few things here... 1: You're right... many of these titles are incredibly impressive... some of which I'd never personally seen before, and I don't have any idea how that's remotely possible. Not that I HAD to have known about it due to my own age or experience, but at least due to all the TH-cam I watch on retro games, etc... You have some really unique as well as impressive titles here for sure. 2: So how'd some of them do it? I'd love a deeper dive into that... some of these titles are just waay beyond what was ever expected from the console. And some of it, like the driving part or even the doom part in toy story, almost look more like tech demos... as yes, it is impressive, but then given the nature of that game, those stages don't really contain much depth either.... which leads me to 3: I wonder of these instances pushed it as far as possible, with any further AI, sprites, addon code to do anything more than this alone, would just be too much... Then again, many of these example more or less disprove that, as they do have more going in, and seemingly could have even more. It's a shame more developers couldn't figure this stuff out back then... or that Sega couldn't buckle down the way Nintendo always does with their consoles, and just know it so well inside and out, that they can develop some of the most exploitative titles in regards to it, the hardware. Really pushing the limits... then sharing that knowledge with third parties. Hell, if that were the case, Sega may still be around... Then again, that's more or less because it would require a great deal of corporate focus and teamwork... which alone could have saved them really.
Bimini Run does not have smooth animation and scaling, it's all choppy and sluggish
omg when i finished alien soldier and batman and robin, all my class and upper ones looked at me like a boss at middle school. so damn hard but so cool. jesper kid ost on batman and robin was fucking nice. hard corps is hell. so many replay values.
Ja ja great I love alien soldier
Great video! I always wonder how some of the earlier Genesis titles might have turned out if they were remastered at a later point in the consoles life, when developers were extracting a lot more out of it.
I always wanted a Streets of Rage 1 with part 2’s engine.
I remember when I was a kid playing contra hard corps in a fit of gamer rage I threw my controller...then my dad came in with his hammer of doom and threatened to destroy it...safe to say I kept quiet after that
I still can't explain it, but pseudo 3d/raster effects are just so darm charming! Nowadays, hardware is so powerful that near realtime photo realism has become common place. But, for me, I'll always love the effects ultra creative devs were able to pull off with hardware that was never designed to perform. Salute!
I hate photorealism too, I want games with other worlds, i don't want a carbon copy of our world, this is the reason for play, isn't? this is the reason why I love the Indie Games or games likes Gravity Rush 1 & 2 on PS4.