The Timeless Beauty of SNES Graphics
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 8 ก.พ. 2025
- The Super Nintendo has arguably aged better than any other console. In 1990 the SNES launched with advanced graphical effects. Transparencies, masking, pixelation effects and yes MODE7, but the hardware was capable of much more. In today's episode we deep dive into some of the unique features that the Super NES had built into its hardware that its competition was not capable of (without clever programming tricks). This is the Timeless Beauty of SNES Graphics.
Credits/Sources:
► snes.nesdev.or...
► wiki.superfami...
► emudev.de/q00-...
Timestamps:
00:00 - Introduction
01:24 - The SNES has 2 screens.
02:52 - Transparencies and Color Math
05:50 - Why Early SNES Emulators were slow
07:32 - Windows and Masking
09:00 - Mosaic Effect
11:05 - Advanced MODE7 tricks
13:01 - Conclusion and Outro
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#SNES #Graphics
For those wondering, I used MESEN (with cheats) and the tile viewer to capture the individual screens for the video. For the blending examples, I used Adobe Premiere Pro and the various blending modes per layer to replicate the effects.
Corrections: For early versions of ZSNES (circa 1997, 1998) I said that 320x240 was the standard mode used. This is incorrect, it was likely to be 640x480 provided you had a fast 2d graphics card of the era.
There is a fourth color math option: Color Subtract + Halve. However there doesn't seem to be any games that use this.
Also, I've never worked on any SNES homebrew myself so the information I've provided may not be 100% accurate as its based-on documentation and my interpretation of it, but hopefully the examples will explain things better. Have a great week!
@@robanderson19: the NeoGeo (much like the Megadrive) was far more powerful but also much simpler, and there were no helper chips to worry about emulating.
Hey MVG I made this video about my favorite console is 3 episodes long, John from Digital foundry and many other guess are part of this: th-cam.com/video/2D3yRQrF9t4/w-d-xo.html
You mean Mesen2, right?
Have no former game developer that worked for the SNES games kept any of the Development Kit documentation at hand and destroyed all of them per the NDA signed with Nintendo? It's a wonder that all the SNES emulation has based their accuracy solely on guess by the appearance of the effects emulated.
Great visualisations nonetheless!
16-bit graphics are like Impressionist art. With just enough fidelity to present an idea, and the player's mind fills in the rest.
Couldn't have said it better!
Limitations often spur creativity. I like using new tools to create art. Not only does it drive a better creative product, but it's fun making the art because you're discovering the end result as you work with the tools.
Although it can be rewarding getting so good with tools that you're able to accurately get the image in your mind onto "paper" with little effort, there's nothing like making something great that you hadn't quite imagined before you set to work on it. It kind of unlocks a childhood sense of wonder.
Just sad that it's becoming more and more of a lost art, the things that modern graphics hardware are so incredible that coding for imagination just doesn't seem to be considered as so important anymore :(
CRT televisions did a lot of the heavy lifting back then, blending the pixels together so the image didn't look so much like an impressionist painting. It's why some people can't stand raw pixels on a modern tv, but will gladly play the same game on a CRT, or with a filter through emulation.
video games before 16bit: biddy boop, biddily boop, biddy boop, done.
video gaming after 16-bit: 15 minutes of cinematics, 4 minutes of gameplay.
16bit was the bridge between the two. You can see it progress from 'slightly better looking than 8bit' in 1989 to 'dang near PlayStation quality' in 1995! I'm pretty sure it was Final Fantasy on SNES that brought us to cinematic gaming, for better/for worse.
This was art. Not just the backgrounds and sprites, but the art of getting it all working.
Math Brain meets Art Brain.
I just appreciate that you’re using lesser known games to highlight some of the incredible capability of the SNES. Shout outs to devs who pour the heart into the passion, no matter the project.
I remember playing DKC for the first time at a friend's birthday party and my mind was blown! I could not believe that it was possible to have such high quality graphics. And it still holds up so well, after all this time.
I got that same feeling when I first saw the amazing visual effects in Jurassic Park and again with Super Mario 64. I miss those types of experiences.
@@ChaosGeneratortbh, Mario 64 felt like a huge leap back to me at the time. I appreciate the impressive leap to 3D graphics now but at the time I was hung up on how much less detail there was compared to Super Mario RPG.
@@urbanski I also liked well done 2D Graphics more than the early 3D lacking Textures.
Meanwhile, Nintendo 64 has Superman 64.
do you remember the hype for the third game, Diddy Kong Country ? lots of pink cocaine
Snes is timeless. There is beauty in the simplicity of the system, graphics and gameplay.
I love the 16 bit era. By far my fave era and I feel fortunate that I got to grow up with it.
Same here
Its your fave BECAUSE you grew up with it. Not the other way around
Completely agree. The SNES vs Genesis/Mega Drive was the best generation ever. I was lucky to have both consoles at the same time back in the 90s. Plus, the graphics have aged like fine wine.
I started with the 2600 and every era from there, still playing games to this day.... I love the 16 bit time frame.
@@Ottophil Not necessarily, I didn't grow up in the 16-bit era and it's my favorite too.
I dare say the SNES and Neo Geo are the consoles that have aged the best.
To this day I find it insane how Neo Geo games used to look in its early days to the 00s, I still can't believe the first Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting 3 came from the same system.
why whats wrong with PS1 and PS2 or NES
I would add the Sega Saturn to this list. It was a flop when it was released, but it has some of the most beautiful 2D games of all time.
I’d add the Sega Saturn too!
Sega Saturn 2D games (and some 3d games) are super beautiful too to this day.
I would add the megadrive/genesis/nes also to this list
I read a book recently about the history of Sega, that also dabbled in their competitors.
There’s a scene where a Nintendo of America executive goes to check in on a “special project” upstairs that’s so far only been answering to the Japanese executives. He is hoping to see some early N64 game or hardware accessory.
They excitedly sit him down and show him DKC, and he says “wow, will all 64 bit games look this good?”
They then spent quite a while convincing him that they had pulled it off on the SNES.
Even some of the best industry experts were surprised at what could be done on 16 bit hardware.
@2:56 - This lighting effect was astonishing to witness in 1994.
Not just because it was technically very impressive, but because it looked beautiful.
It wasn't just the fluid graphics, it's the playability of so many games I miss.
This was the first thing I bought with my own money. I mowed lawns and had a paper and pamphlet route and saved up all year till boxing day sales and bought the Mario All Stars box from Toys R Us. Very satisfying.
SM all stars was awesome.. loads of games on one cart!
My mom bought mine. It was also very satisfying, extremely satisfying.
That was an awesome bundle. Game was terrific.
SNES is the first game console that I earned by myself when I started working in a Lumber yard back in 1992. Still have the receipt and the SNES still remains my favorite console.
It must've been like heaven after all that work
What amazes me about these old console graphics is that everything was done in assembly. Nowadays, programmers have many resources at hand like engines, APIs, middlewares, assets etc. But then you had to be a very good programmer to make such amazing graphics and effects on these 16 bit machines. It really makes you appreciate the craft behind them.
Much of the difficulty was in understanding these japanese systems, sometimes with incomplete or poorly translated documentation, understanding their technical capabilities and imagining how those capabilities could be used in practice to create visual effects in games. Assembly code was widely used back then due to its speed being ideal for the era's limited hardware. I think C started becoming more viable and used during the 32-bit generation.
they did it all on paper before they actually started on the computer too.
Yeah, that's why in those conditions there were only two 'ethnicities' of people making them and 99.9% male. Quotas don't work when the difficulty setting is that high.
@@Marcus_K You mean because the Japanese companies handicapped 'Western' aka white developers on purpose to give their own the edge, all while depending on the white market and tech industry. The technology wasn't their own, basically all key components and methods came from the US industry, all the chips and components were well understood. The only reason 'Western' developers struggled is because the Japanese didn't play fair, as mentioned didn't provide translated documentation and also all kinds of other support systems their own had, which was all well within the scope of their mega corporations to organise. There are copious stories of this type of thing. They're not stupid and knew exactly what the outcome would be. Despite that you can see tiny 'Western' developers with a fraction of the budgets making elite games as good or better than their 'AAA' titles, and that's precisely why they didn't want to help too much and be outclassed. Let's consider that Nintendo had no clue how to make a game like Starfox inhouse but needed a star programmer from a small company in England to do it and design the FX chip for them.
@@m0rvidusm0rvidus18
Not to mention that;
* Nintendo only really made active efforts in the Anglopshere alone. Non-Anglopshere developers quickly gave up due to the lack of documentation, unless…
* Licensed games made under the orders of largely indifferent corporations who believed what they were doing was a fad
* Nonwhite Westerners were unable to find a significant position in any company.
* The Eastern Bloc crap made development kits entering places like Hong Kong or Ukraine unlikely.
I always feel grateful that i lived through the start of Pong and watched as games just got better and better, Arcades, Home consoles, Home computing, BBC Micro, Spectrum's, C64's, Amiga's, Acorn Archimedes, Playstation, PC 3DFX era, Dreamcast and so much more was such a golden age for gaming.
Feel like we have been in a gaming dark age for years now, hope to see another Golden age again.
Thanks for all your videos i have been reading more about gaming graphics lately and reading the great book
Computer graphics. Principles and practice - Hughes
I agree. I got the Atari 2600 in 1982 my freshman year of highschool. It's really amazing how much gaming has changed since then.
right there with you
Same with. Watched and lived that era. After N64 and Dreamcast there is nothing to excite me. Had little excitement with 3DS . Now there is no woah factor any more, everything is just the same, and nothing is new or plays as good as the old games did. Build a super duper PC with 100 or more steam games and only tried 20 of them. Think old Arcades in 80-90 was the golden era for me. Then with the rise of the home console and pc it is a downhill.
My very first home console. Saved up for an entire year. Got the version with pack in Zelda. Had no idea how lucky I was. 31 years later, still loving it
SNES is still to this day my favorite console ever. But let's not forget that $199 in 1991 is equivalent to $458 today.
Yep, I also facepalmed when MVG said "only $199" as if it was some chump change in 1991.
@@PutlerHuyIo Inflation isn't that Linear, but it still stands as being costly, especially when some SNES games were $70 when launched
Worth every penny.
percentage of average wage (or better median) is a better measure of how expensive and affordable something is.
@kirinoa Median where matters even more. When the SNES came out, it was $2-3 an hour here, so even more than $500 today would take to save.
I love this era of gaming. Two entirely different machines, each with their own unique strengths and weaknesses. True exclusives, games I bought and owned in perpetuity (and still do!).
People say there can’t be just two main consoles in the space, but…it worked just fine here…
I'd argue there is barely a 3rd console right now. Nintendo and Sony are selling like hotcakes while MS is kind of off in a corner selling a fraction of the other two while seeming far more interested in the software side of things than the hardware side (does the Xbox have a single true exclusive?). If they dipped out of hardware completely, I'm not sure what exactly would be the difference.
You’re forgetting the myriad of consoles that existed around this time that were popular in other regions of the world. Between the Pc Engine, the 3DO, the Jaguar, and Neo Geo…I mean, not everything came down to solely the snes and Genesis.
@@opaljk4835 - As far as sales numbers and cultural relevance it pretty much did come down solely to the SNES and Genesis. I saw them in gaming magazines but I didn't know or hear of a single kid having any of those systems you named in the early to mid '90s. As far as most people were aware only 2 systems existed at that time.
@@opaljk4835 I don't think the 3DO and Jaguar were very successful anywhere. Just the PC Engine (TurboGrafx) in Japan, as far as I've heard. But of course, the SNES ended up beating it.
@ the point was just that these consoles shouldn’t be brushed aside as curiosities…especially something that has over 700 games like the pc engine or 250 games for the 3DO, which had its base…or the neo Geo. I mean the list goes on, it’s important to see be on the 2 mainstream dominate forces
The SNES is my absolute favorite console.
1. Insert game turn on play.
2. No DLC BS, or day one patches!
3. Incredible graphics and music.
4. Tight controls.
5. Incredible library of many of the best games ever made!
This
so basically every console till 2005
@@redwalkie3552 Not really. For example, how many of those consoles from 2005 and prior have say five games appear on every 100 Best Games of All Time list to this very day: Maybe SNES, NES, PlayStation, N64 and PS2. Some of them I listed might not even manage that, and most of the others I didn't list struggle to even get one or two on there at best. So that's a very real factor here.
@ The thing that this guy said, I mean "booting the game, no first day patches, good graphics, pure fun" is every console pre-ps3/x360, so pre-online patches etc. We didn't talked about the games, just the concept of it was deformed only in 7th generation
@@redwalkie3552 Well, he listed 5 points, so I'm considering them all together, which is why I believe he's saying the console was so special. It's everything combined that gives the overall experience.
DKC 1/2/3 still amaze me. Amazing looking games some 30 years later
Greatest trilogy of games imo. DKC2 and 3 are some of my favourite games ever.
All pre rendered digitized gfx, not real.
I remember getting a SNES for Christmas when I was a teenager. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. Before Christmas I faked sick, and stayed home all day playing my SNES and no one ever found out until I told my mom a year or so ago. Oh man, the 90s weren't so bad...not so bad at all.
My fav SNES game is Yoshi's Island. It came out towards the end of the SNES cycle and you could tell the devs had learned how to really get the most out of their machine. The crayon art style was totally original at the time of release. Up until then, I felt like the tiles in all games were obvious. YI managed to feel organic in style. There's so many neat effects like the entire world warping when you touch a fuzzy; the rainbow effect of Kamek's wand when he dusts bosses; and the subsequent boss that transforms; and you have your own transformations with the vehicles. If it wasn't for Baby Mario's crying sfx it'd be my favourite Mario game.
Didn’t that game have a booster chip of some kind?
@@opaljk4835yes the SuperFX 2 chip
@@opaljk4835 Yep, one of the few games to use the Super FX2 chip.
Some of the effects in Yoshi's Island had me thinking - 'wow - they must have some really good acid out there in Kyoto'
@@RandomSime you found the tiling in DKC to be obvious?
I’ve told so many friends that I think the SNES has the most timeless graphics out of any console. Excellent sprite work never ages.
Although the way it looked on a tube TV and how it looks emulated today are pretty different. We have a ways to go before we have good CRT emulation
@ Awh man, that’s true. Weird how newer tech makes them look *worse.*
@@Its_PizzaTimeit's the dithering effect. Developers back in the day understood how CRTs worked and what effects could be achieved with certain colour schemes. But it doesn't translate the same way on new tvs. New tvs show exactly what's coded, which is why the colour is crap.
Go look at what SNK was making on the Neo Geo then, Real Bout Fatal Fury, Garou Mark of the Wolves, The Last Blade 1 and 2, The King of Fighters ‘98 and ‘02. That’s where sprite work peaked imo along with Street Fighter 3 from Capcom.
MVG, I absolutely love how you're able to explain such detailed and intricate ideas so well, that the average person can understand them. Can't wait to see what's next.
means a ton, thank you so much
@@ModernVintageGamer May I echo those thoughts MVG! You have produced amazing work over the years and have answered many of my questions floating around my head from the console and computing dayz... I will never tire of your content, ideas and opinion, a true ambassador of the entire scene from start to finish in my opinion! You deserve more than just kind words....
Yes
Rare games for the snes particularly DK world are to this day my some of my favorite titles graphically. Beautiful era.
Mega Man X, Chrono Trigger, A Link to the Past, and SMW all amaze me today. I replay all of them from time to time. An amazing console. I love the way this vid reconstructs the way it was groundbreaking and high-tech, in a way that can feel invisible after the passage of so many years.
The snes is still my favorite console of all time. It is the reason I had 2 growing up, and why I bought another one when I sold those off in high school. I have one next to me with a FXPak Pro and a 32 inch Sony Trinitron hooked up with HD Retrovision cables to get an amazing picture and gaming experience with original hardware. It is nice to be able to relive my high school years.
I never had a 16 bit system, my parents were of the "we already bought a bunch of games for the Nintendo we're not buying another box they won't play on" mindset. So I can honestly say those games, the graphics and gameplay... they're just good. I'm not going back and playing Yoshi's Island with decades of nostalgia in it, I'm playing it as a new game that I've never touched before and boy howdy, it's like that whole system holds up. Even the trash games, you can mostly tell what is going on or what you're supposed to be doing. Some of those earlier games, NES and Atari specifically... without a nice side of nostalgia a lot of them are not palatable lol
@@MaxBandwidth-rb1qx feel sorry for kids who had to skip console generations because their parents didn’t understand that’s how technology works. A new console is a small price to pay to keep up with an amazing pastime and hobby
@ oh don't get it twisted they definitely spoiled me and they were right--I had that "ADHD + expensive interests" thing going on. Besides they ended up getting a PC right at the beginning of the Quake era so it all worked out lol
@@MaxBandwidth-rb1qx - Plus there wasn't a trend back then with upgrading technology every few years and constantly buying a new model of something. People expected that purchase to last and the NES was such a new phenomenon at the time many parents were shocked when a new model released a few years later that cost even more. It's understandable why many parents refused to upgrade so soon but like you said...at least you got to go back and play amazing games that are brand new to you.
I understand your point of view, but I'm from that SNES era and there were already a lot of games that I considered bad or unplayable. The good ones are still good today, because the 2D platform concept helps. I see a difference in the first 3D games like on the PlayStation or N64, today I can't play them, they have aged very badly...
I still think well done pixel art ages so much better than many 3d graphics
True!
True ✔ 👍
Nah
@@C.I...how dare you
Agree, but if the 3d graphics are stylized and not aimed for looking realistic, they can still look great many years later.
The SNES was the peak of Nintendo's well deserved domination in the game console space.
It’s a great system but they basically had a monopoly on third parties it would’ve been more competitive if Genesis was getting more games
They dominated in the NES era, partly due to their appaling anti-competitive tactics, such as forbidding their third-party developers to release games on competing consoles. In the SNES era they had to cede about a third of the japanese market to NEC and half of the western market to Sega.
...that sunset alone in the background in DKC 0:03 will forever be the best of the SNES...its soothing and amazing just to look at....❤😭
The distinct graphical style of the Amiga reminds me a lot of the SNES which is why I got the Amiga mini console and got interested in its library. There is so much good stuff there that I am glad that I did. Based on what I have read, there are various things that the two platforms have in common in terms of hardware, the techniques used, and the sound libraries that developers used that make them look and sound so similar with many games.
Brings back memories of early ZSNES builds and the transparency issues, especially in SoM. I love the SNES graphics and also the SPC audio, although on original hardware I do prefer the sound with a digital audio mod. Some of those soundtracks still give me chills, especially the squaresoft stuff
Thanks
I had that console and my mind was blown, passing from a Master System to this beast. I had very few games, but I could rent a lot from a local videostore. Those were amazing games and amazing times.
The SNES and other contemporary consoles are great examples of how limitations breed creativity, because when you know exactly what you are, and aren't, capable of doing, you can't help but come up with creative ways to exploit your resources to great effects, while if you're capable of doing "anything" with more powerful hardware, you have a harder time coming up with anything meaningful since there's nothing pressuring you to be creative.
I say this because a lot of newer games trying to imitate the styles of these old games often fail to look as impressive and impactful as the classics, and I believe this lack of limitations is at least part of the reason why; sure, many probably thought of imitating the famous Mode7 effect, but I haven't seen any that did something like what Contra 3 or Super Turrican 2 did with layers that are creatively placed in front and behind the main character's sprite.
If I said it from time to time and I will say it again "Yoshis Island will never look bad or dated!"
Pugsley's Scavenger Hunt is maybe the most beautiful snes game I've played, surprisingly. I still have a copy a freind gave me when I was 10.
Always loved the aesthetic of the zsnes menu overlay.
What if I said you can use that alongside snes9x? Look up ZMZ. And spread the word :)
The super Nintendo dev kit was built so well that it allowed people who developed video games for the original NES at the time to switch over easier (for the most part) to have a way better kit and tools to work with, it allowed them to focus more on making graphics better and making gameplay easier to make. The super Nintendo was one of the best consoles to develop for just because of how it's built. You got to admire that
It was actually a terrible console to develop for due to the awful processor.
The SNES has some amazing looking games. Great console for the time. More importantly, it had some great games because of good gameplay too!!
5:50 an entire video on the history of emulators for a given system, the challenges that had to be overcome, and improvements over time would be fascinating.
I wonder how Nintendo devs came up with all these "modes" for SNES. Do they just think in every posible gameplay scenario and say "we probably will need and extra background for mode 7 in case some dev wanted to make their character pass under a bridge or something"
In this case, they could just draw on past experience with the issue: the NES also had just one background layer, and devs had to use tricks to make the characters go behind it. (This often didn't look quite right.)
Outside of that, though, they couldn't have thought of everything, so I wonder what scenarios they did imagine. It's an interesting thought!
the character sprites in Godzilla Kaijuu Kaikessen (JPN). So beautiful. Ive worked with many pixel artists, majority found it difficult to replicate themselves. It's a lost art!
A game that makes great use of mode 7 is Super Soccer(Super Formation Soccer in Japan), which was a PAL launch title.
It has a top down, but slightly rear view of the action, and the field and "northern" goal/stand are rendered in mode 7 with a horizontal split that moves up and down the screen depending where you are on the field. The field is laid at an angle, I'd say about 45 degrees from being flat, as I say the camera is not quite top down. The other mode 7 split part is the "northern" goal and stand with fans that is shown straight on to the camera zooms in and out as you move up and down the field, with the where the screen splits moving up and down vertically to accommodate the zooming.
Thats why i love this era so much. Devs had to be genius and creative. The consoles had to offer the stuff this video covers, now it's just here's our new console with this gpu this cpu and this storage ok bye.. boring ! The snes is such a beautiful hardware
I love how MVG videos always have a run time that ends right when newswave, the SpawnWave news show starts.
As a MegaDrive (Genesis) owner, I was very jealous of the SNES port of Art of Fighting having the "zoom" feature that was present on the arcade and NeoGeo versions.
Ahh! I'll never not love seeing that colorful ZSNES interface!
I didn't have a Super Nintendo. I had ZSNES growing up!
I found it in like 2000/2001 when I discovered emulation.
This is how I originally experienced games like: Mega Man 7, X, & Bass, Earthbound, Bust-a-Move, and Chrono Trigger.
On the CRT connected to our purple Compaq Presario at like 12 years old.
Funny enough, this looked probably more correct than people playing it on the pc monitor.
🤌🤌🤌🤌🤌
Sure, it wasn't perfect, but MAN is it a timeless emulator. If only there was a version that combined all the emulation improvements that have been made in the past two decades with the interface. THAT would be the perfect emulator to me.
I was there during SNES reign but i never owed one until i started my game collection in the late 2000's. The only times i played it was at friends and family's houses so just like you i mainly experienced its games via ZSNES around 2000/2001. At that time, my PS1 was broken and my PC couldn't run recent titles so being able to play all the 8/16 bit classics on it with my almighty 15" VGA monitor was a blast.
Well I, or more correctly, my brother did have the NES and SNES. Chrono Trigger cartridge was expensive even back then. I did got to play it, but on borrow from his friend. I loved the game right from the beginning. Wasn't until I got my first Compaq PC a few years later, then I discovered ZSNES and that was a real joy. The Compaq wasn't powerful enough to handle CT, which was true, but from this video I now understood the older version of ZSNES back then was struggling too. So it could only manage CT at half speed, but it could handle Secret of Mana at full speed.
Now we need the Ultimate Beauty of Genesis Graphics!
Very cool to see Pugsley's Scavenger Hunt getting so much love here. I remember being genuinely blown away seeing screenshots of this in Nintendo Magazine System's review back in the day.
same! love the visuals but man that gameplay is brutal
I had no idea that game took advantage of the SNES that well. I realize there was an Addams Family renaissance in the early 90s, but of all the licensed IP Ocean was making games for, it’s surprising they wouldn’t have saved these effects for Batman or Terminator - something adolescent boys of that time would consider cool.
Much of my experience with the SNES is on emulators. Here in the Philippines back in the '90s, consoles and games were ungodly expensive. Parents would prefer buying them abroad. Never owned a Nintendo besides the Famicom, so I've turned to emulators since discovering them in the 2000s. It ain't the same as owning physical, but it's better than nothing and I was happy. ZSNES is literally a part of my childhood.
Awesome video. Would love to see content just like this but for the Genesis/Megadrive. There are so many awesome graphical effects in certain games as well like Adventures of Batman, Red Zone, the silky animation of Alien Soldier, Vectorman, Thunder Force etc. I love the 16-bit era, 60fps arcadey goodness, timelessly fun generation.
Man.. Zsnes’s UI is bringing me back to the late 90’s watching classmates play Mega Man X on our tech class’s computers in middle school! That is how I first learned about Emulation and would get into it heavily as a kid, finally in high school I imported a Super UFO Pro for my snes to dump roms using Floppy Disk!
Donkey Kong Country is my favorite SNES game. It was such a big deal when it came out. People now just don’t know that feeling of new/impressive graphics.
it was a revolution... it looked way better than the 32bits machines, never seen something like that again. Amazing times.
@ well, I wouldn’t go that far. PS1 and Saturn had better 2D capabilities. Megaman X4 and Castlevania come to mind.
Makes me wonder how they came up with all these at the time....
"So what kind of features will we need for the SNES? What should it be capable of?"
"Yes"
SNES is definitely one of my favorite consoles/game libraries. I love playing SNES games on my PSP.
I grew up an 80s latchkey kid, moved constantly (3 schools in grd 7 ALONE) one outfit per YEAR, usually Christmas so I never got as excited as the other kids. Christmas 94 came around, we had an SNES but only had two games. We had opened our gifts, and Id gotten the obligitory pair of pants, cotton t and a bag of tube socks and thought that was it...then mom pulled one last gift out behind her back, a small box. We knew it must be good because of the theatrics, as we ripped off the paper we say the first few words..."DO" with a star in the "O"...FRICKEN DONKEY KONG COUNTRY!!! Best Christmas ever, up there when I was 5 and got optimus prime. See EVERYONE was excited about the next generation, of 3D games (our local rental shop had a two week wait on their copies of StarFox because ppl had never had access to 3D in their homes) and when DKC came out everyone thought for sure it was a joke and it was really for the upcoming n64. Its not true 3D but no one knew any better and it looked better than most games in the damn arcade, which was still a thing then. I can still lose hours in the first game and the water level music by David Wise is pure ear candy, not just one of my favorite video game tunes but one of my fav period.
$199 in 1991 would be about $460 today for those wondering. So affordability was about the same as modern consoles.
SNES always felt like the peak of 2D gaming graphics to me. Cool to see some of what was going on under the hood revealed here.
It opened my eyes again using a crt for the first time in decades... It's perfection
16-bit era, has aged like fine wine, aside from the SGI pre-rendered sprites. They've aged about as well as digitized Mortal Kombat sprites.
Hand drawn art though? 🤌 Still great today.
Videos talking about unique SNES graphics tricks very often include Super Turrican 2. Understandably so. Factor 5 was an _extremely_ talented development team that got the absolute best out of the N64 and GameCube later on.
Great video. Great explanations about the modes in SNES games.
One of the most misguided decisions of the mid to late 90s was to declare 2D and sprite-based games dead and force now-very-poorly-aged 3D games on the market in its place. IIRC Nintendo actively discouraged devs from making traditional 2D sprite based games on the N64. In hindsight, this was the absolute destruction of an era of games that ended up aging better than the thing that tried to replace them.
With a very specific CRT filter these games still look crazy :O
Super ghouls & ghosts remains the most impressive snes game ive ever played. Gargoyls quest had even more jaw dropping art ive ever seen in a snes game
Boy those ZSNES memories, wow... man i used to have a field day with those ROMs 😂 that's how i first experienced Chrono Trigger and Street Fighter hacks 😂
Usually, when we say an old game still holds up, we mean it looks nice and/or is still enjoyable to play on our modern devices. As such the effects discussed here and that they might have are secondary since we take them for granted on modern games.
Luckily, many 16/32 bit games are still good looking and play well despite our modern pixelated displays.
My only pain point is the fact we'll never experience most of those games as they were intended to look since some effects are locked behing CRT TV's shenanigans. But feel free to search for some videos on the subject in order to get the point because some games just look ugly on LCD, especially the ones relying on flicker, dithering, subpixel bleeding and other raster effects but that's another story. It's a justified critique in the context of the way we consume those games today but unjust towards the artists that worked on them and the way they were intended to be played and also how gamers at the time experienced them.
0:47 By the way, I just wanted to clarify for viewers that the chart there is showing how many colours per tile the SNES can show in the various modes, rather than the total amount of colours for each background. For example, while it's only four colours per tile in Mode 0 (actually 3 visible and 1 transparent), it's actually 24 seperate visible colours per layer for a total of 96 visible colours for the backgrounds alone, before any colour math and HDMA gradients are applied. And that's as well as the standard 120 visible colours dedicated to sprites too, with 16 colours per sprite chosen from 8 16-colour palettes as per usual for all the modes. So, even in the lowest colour background mode that some people think of as a kind of "NES mode", there's actually more colours on-screen than possibly many people realise. It's actually roughly the same 256 colours as any other mode, just divvied up slightly differently. And, as we know, in the right hands even a few colours can be used very effectively for some great results, which then makes the fact there's four full-screen fully-overlapping backgrounds to play with in Mode 0 all the more interesting in terms of what's possible when used effectively, at least for me personally.
Yep, BG Mode 0 has 8, 4 color palettes for each bg layer, so that means it can display a max of 32x4=128 on screen colors.
@@jsr734 Yeah, and that's just for the backgrounds alone, which is pretty great. And it still has the standard 128 additional colours for sprites as per usual too. So there's a lot can be done with that in the right hands.
Your protesting comes subtle, from simply saying new genesis game's would be better on the snes. You try to hide it as criticism, but you've been exposed and confirmed bitter.
Keep weeping snes hero😢🦸
@@LockedAndLoaded89 What I say is exactly what I mean. I think there's some cool things the Super Nintendo can do that are quite unique to it for the time and indeed that it can also do better than genesis, and I'd like to see more new games and demos and rom hacks and such on Super Nintendo that show off those things fully, so I mention it whenever it seems like a good time to do so.
And at least we both know there's absolutely no subtlety in how bitter and butthurt you are that the Super Nintendo was so dominant in the 16-bit era and that you still haven't gotten over it to this day, which is where literally everything you say and do comes from. You simply cannot deal that the genesis lost to the Super Nintendo. But there's simply nothing you can ever say or do to change that. And I know that's how you feel about every sega loss ever, which it did in every single generation it was part of, including it being irrelevant in the modern console hardware space too.
So, since that's really at the heart of it, I'll just post from that other comment again in here as well:
The total worldwide sales of Sega Genesis games is uncertain, but estimates from AI sources place it between 200-230 million units. Meanwhile, the official figure for Super Nintendo game sales stands at 379.6 million, nearly double that of the Genesis. The best-selling game of the 16-bit era, Super Mario World, outsold Sonic the Hedgehog by 5.6 million units. Additionally, the Super Nintendo had 54 million-selling titles, compared to the Genesis' 19.
The Super Nintendo pioneered the now-standard diamond-shaped face button layout and shoulder buttons, while earlier innovations like the D-pad and dual thumb control method came from Nintendo’s Game & Watch and NES. The N64 introduced the first proper analog thumbstick, and the PS1 later standardized dual analog control. However, the N64 technically supported dual analog before the PS1 via a two-controller setup, as seen in GoldenEye 64. The genesis pioneered nothing in this area.
The stock Super Nintendo was groundbreaking in many other aspects too: it was the first console to support proper transparency effects, to feature 4 full-screen, fully-overlapping background layers as standard, and to introduce cool mosaicing effects. It also pioneered Mode 7 for full 60fps background scaling and rotation on a home console, was the first to support Dolby Surround sound, created the kart racing genre, and solidified one half of the now hugely-popular Metroidvania genre. Additionally, it was revolutionary with its use of pre-rendered visuals, as seen in "Donkey Kong Country." The genesis, on the other hand, didn't give us any innovations like that.
Regionally, the Super Nintendo dominated Japan and led by a couple million in North America, while the Genesis performed better in "other" market that represented only about a third the size of the U.S. market at the time. The most reliable sales data for the Genesis points to around 30-35 million units, including 1.5 million $50 bargain basement Genesis 3 models made by Majesco. By contrast, the Super Nintendo’s figure of 49.1 millions units sold is official and only includes proper first-party models.
In the end, the Super Nintendo outsold the Genesis by around 15-20 million units, had nearly a thousand more games, boasted the top-selling title of the generation, had far more million-sellers, likely sold hundreds of millions more games overall, and remains home to more titles consistently found on all Greatest Games of All Time lists to this day. Personal preference aside, the Super Nintendo was, by every major metric, the most successful console of the 16-bit era-an undeniable fact supported by the numbers.
@inceptional So, you're saying you aren't bitter or jealous of the genesis and it's aftermarket dominance? Than why have you been confirmed bitter by pyron? It seems whatever you were typing on his channel got you banned and ridiculed in the comments. All of your forum bans are also confirmation of your bitterness ☹️
You can't save face, you are the weeping snes hero😢🦸
Thank you for explaining this with enough detail but still keeping it accessible. Once again you balanced this spot on. 🙏
5:50 Yes, I remember early emulation struggled with rendering transparency effects and had an option to enable it later on.
Snes was maybe the best console ever made, all things considered. Such a iconic library... I love the ps1 era but most early low poly 32 and 64 bit games aged like milk, while the 2d sprites of the 16 bit era aged like wine.
There's also the of-ignored but still standard built-in direct colour mode that allows for over 2000 colours on BG1 alone, albeit with some restrictions on specific implementation, plus another 120 for BG2 and a further 120 for sprites on top of that, which is something most people don't even know about. And it can do that before using any of the colour math and HDMA backdrop colour gradients too, which adds even more colours on top of that, potentially hundreds to thousands more.
It's kinda crazy how even in 2025 so much of the SNES' full capabilities and features remain untapped fully. Mode 0 and its four full-screen fully-overlapping background layers is another standard feature that's woefully underrepresented too. And Mode 6 with its high-res 512x448i visuals and high fidelity column scrolling potential has never been used in a proper game to this day. To name just a couple more there. Bonkers. But I guess it just means there's still some interesting and potentially very cool stuff for the system to give in modern times.
There were a few games that used Mode 5 high-res which isn't too different from Mode 6. Seiken Densetsu 3 (Trials of Mana) menu screen leaps to mind. But to your point I agree, it's a damn impressive piece of hardware and it's a shame we never got to see what it could do if it had gotten the CD add-on and lasted just a few more years for the devs to really get creative with some of these underused features.
@@gaspump Sadly, only a single commercial SNES title ever used the Mode 5 high-res mode properly in game, RPM Racing, and it was crap. I think that has convinced a lot of people that high-res mode was only good for menus and such. But there's a proper hardcore bullet-hell shmup in development for SNES called Rex Nobilis that shows just what's possible in high-res, along with showcasing some of the other modes too. And even that, as technically impressive as it is, I don't think has pixel artistry that truly shows off the true full capability on Mode 5 when everything comes together either. A whole lot of untapped potential there for sure.
This video showed nothing but cropped stretched colorful unicorn snes graphics moving in slow motion 🦄
@@LockedAndLoaded89 Nothing you ever say or do can change the past. And you're not moving the needle in the present either. You're just showing everyone how big an effect the Super Nintendo had across the entire industry and gaming community, be it amazingly positive for those who were lucky enough to have one or clearly very bitter for some others who weren't in the Super Nintendo camp at the time.
I was amazed by the walking scene in the intro of the Final Fantasy 6 when I first played it. It was the first time I experienced something like that.
Also, Chrono Trigger is still one of my favorite games of all times, it's so good ❤
Trials of Mana/Seiken Densetsu 3 is a game which I think really shows of some off the sheer visual spectacle the SNES was capable of for its time, with brilliant use of those colours, great us of transparency, and the various HDMA effects and such that genuinely makes it look like some 32-bit 2D Saturn game at times imo. Even now, it still looks gorgeous. The boss battles in particular are just beautiful. And the audio is similarly great too.
Terranigma is another game that showed great use of colours and transparency, don't remember much else of it nowadays though, was too long since I last played it :(
This video showed nothing but cropped stretched colorful unicorn snes graphics moving in slow motion 🦄
@@LockedAndLoaded89 Man, you truly are bitter and butthurt that the Super Nintendo was top dog in its generation, selling a whopping 15-20 million more systems than the nearest competition, receiving nearly a thousand more games overall than the nearest competition, and having more games that still appear in all Best Games of All Time lists to this day than any other console of its time or prior, as well as the fact that Nintendo is still a major dominant force in the console hardware space today. It's very unfortunate you can't go back in time and change the past, because maybe it all could have been so different, right. Sadly, you can't change history, and you're stuck suffering a severe case of Super Nintenderangement Syndrome. :-o
@@inceptional I despise the snes for making JRPG's a cultural phenomenon, all the kitty and bunny ear wearing cosplay people that are crumbling modern society 😾🐰🇯🇵
🤢
@@LockedAndLoaded89 Yes, the Super Nintendid make JRPGs/RPGs a cultural phenomenon.
And it made Super Mario World the best selling game of the entire generation, pushed the sci-fi racer to new heights with F-Zero, gave us the groundbreaking Mode 7 rotation and scaling effects, properly popularised one half of the now infamous Metroidvania genre, created the kart racing genre with Super Mario Kart, revolutionised the used of pre-rendered visuals in Donkey Kong Country, blew us away with cutting edge 3D polygon visuals that had never been seen to that level on a home console until Star Fox released, was the first console to support displaying four proper full-screen fully-overlapping background layers, was the first home console to use proper multi-coloured transparency effects, was the first home console to support Dolby Surround sound, gave us the now industry standard four face buttons and shoulder buttons on a controller, gave us a bunch of all-time great games that still appear on every single Best Games of All Time list to this very day, a few of which are those classic JRPGs/RPGs, etc.
The Super Nintendid a whole load of very cool things.
Great mini-doc on the behind the scenes production magic! The high-end stuff is just gorgeous. Vibrant colour palette, illusion of depth, beautiful settings and charming design. Pixelated paintings unfolding in real-time. No matter how many generations go by that will _never_ cease to be pleasing to the eye. Hence the well-earned "timeless" moniker.
The graphics are still very charming…but what will always get me is the SOUND. The added depth and dimension provided by the SNES’s sound capabilities is just as captivating.
I miss the days when each console had its own graphical look
Its amazing how much was done with so little, Effects like Chrono Triggers Time Travel and the spell effects from Treasure of Rudras are probably my favorite.
As a hardcore 8 bit assembly programmer, I could only dream of the amount of VDU power the SNES had. In the end, it's more about very smart design and good graphics + level design than programming.
I have to keep it 100 here - I don't think the SNES visuals were all that.
The SNES was carried largely by two things: -
1. Its colour pallet
2. Its gimmicks.
I was much more impressed the first time I saw Castle of Illusion, Sonics 1 and 2 and Streets of Rage 2 over anything the SNES dropped.
The only game that really looked futuristic to me, was F Zero.
I'm not saying games didn't look nicer much later in the console's life, but have to say its first two years really didn't impress me that much.
The Genesis was more consistent over its life span and just had a more diverse and creative line up, especially when you looked at all the stuff EA did with them.
A lot of early SNES games looked corny, and the gimmicks were often used in a hokey way. It was basically the Riker of consoles, "growing the beard" around 1994 or so.
@@G-Self It was bum fluff in Yr1 and Yr2 and nothing really but a neck beard to me by 1994.
While my ColecoVision is probably my favorite console from a nostalgia standpoint, the Super Famicom/SNES is hands down my favorite overall console for its library, graphics and sound. I was lucky enough to have imported the Super Famicom at release without paying the premium most places were charging and I played Super Mario World to death until I knew every secret ans then some(with no understanding of Japanese).
To this day, it is probably the system that gets the most English translations, and there are still many great games to be discovered. I still play this library and have no issues with how anything looks are sounds, the slow down is probably the only thing that ages the system in any way. But most games now have patches that address that issue. Oh, and did I mention the controller? Maybe the best one ever made. Truly one of the best video game systems ever made, and with a library that is second to none.
One English translation I highly recommend is Mega Man & Bass.
The SNES for sure has the most beautiful, colorful and charming pixel-art of any console ever - some might give it to the GBA - with the Neo Geo surpassing it only in sheer sprite scale and oomph.
my favorite console is the sega megadrive but i love the snes aswell... and man, what an amazing machine: those great looking graphics are absolutly stunning ❤️✨
Space Megaforce/Super Aleste is a technical masterpiece I like to bring up, that didn't use any enhancement chip as far as i can remember, and still ran with lots of cool effects and little to no slowdown.
I would love to see a follow-up video comparing SNES games to their GBA ports and discussing the graphics engines. Great video!
To be fair to the GBA, it was actually capable of pretty much every SNES effect could do and was actually far more powerful under the hood, but the lower resolution and the way many games used terribly over-saturated colours at the time just really didn't do it full justice. If not trying to port SNES games though, the GBA could and can produce some gorgeous results.
@@inceptional Agreed! GBA is maybe still my favorite console, it really feels like an SNES 2. The SNES ports were a nice addition :)
@@inceptional The low quality audio is what really ruins GBA for me. The sample rate and bit depth are just horribly low causing static and artifacts.
@@Vuusteri Yeah, I think that's probably its weakest aspect too. It's still possible to create really good music for it in the right hands though, but it's like trying to work on some halfway house between the NES and genesis imo. I wonder what people consider some of the best music on the system.
Dude, this was fun. Also reminded me that I should replay super turrican. I was blown away when I first played my super Nintendo as a kid. The SNES and Genesis have held up really well graphically, imo
Back when video games had to be creatively compact. Any issue like that these days would just get brute forced and the hardware would take on the load. Just like the memory requirements of all these new games.
The opening of Final Fantasy IV on SNES completely blew me away as a kid back in 1992! Seeing the airships in the game fly around the world map in Mode 7 was such a treat!! Great video as always MVG
I'm not sure if you have done one already, but I would love for you to so a similar video for the Sega Megadrive (Genesis). I've noticed some amazing tricks done on that system in some games - Batman and Robin, Castlevania the new Generation and Contra Hard Corps to name a few.
i will always regret entirely missing out on the 16 bit era solely because i have no nostalgia for it, and nostalgia is a major part of why i enjoy old games no matter how objectively good or bad they may be.
256 pixels resolution was a big no for arcade ports. Also a snail for a cpu was the reason I bought a Megadrive.
Unfortunately, it didn't prevent the genesis from being outsold by the Super Nintendo by 15-20 million units when all was said and done, or stop if from getting roughly a thousand less games worldwide, or make it receive anywhere near as many games that still appear on all Best Games of All Time list to this day. But, so long as you were happy with your purchase and don't still hold any bitterness about how things turned out, because no matter what you say or do it will never change the past, it's all good. It's just a shame sega isn't relevant in the modern console hardware business anymore. Still, Nintendo is doing great, and the Nintendo Switch 2 is something to be very excited about. And you will likely be able to play a bunch of the best genesis games on there similarly to how you could do so on the Nintendo Switch. So that's cool.
@@inceptional No, there is no bitter at all 🙂. I had my own money and could get both if I wanted. It was a pure choice. I had Nintendo products in the past.
@@inceptionalThe Sega Genesis sold more software worldwide than the Super Nintendo. Also, Sega originated the face button layout for modern controllers, not to mention the modern placement of the left stick as well as the use of shoulder triggers. (Both of which Nintendo adopted for the Switch Pro Controller, ironically enough.)
I should also point out that the Super Nintendo's "lead" was largely owed to Japan, where Sega never managed to get a foothold. Elsewhere, the SNES and Genesis were neck-and-neck, and in some cases even outsold the SNES outright. (To this day, we don't have reliable final sales figures for the Genesis.)
@@G-Self The total worldwide sales of Sega Genesis games is uncertain, but estimates from AI sources place it between 200-230 million units. Meanwhile, the official figure for Super Nintendo game sales stands at 379.6 million, nearly double that of the Genesis. The best-selling game of the 16-bit era, Super Mario World, outsold Sonic the Hedgehog by about 5.6 million units. Additionally, the Super Nintendo had 54 million-selling titles, compared to the Genesis' 19.
The Super Nintendo pioneered the now-standard diamond-shaped face button layout and shoulder buttons, while earlier innovations like the D-pad and dual thumb control method came from Nintendo’s Game & Watch and NES. The N64 introduced the first proper analog thumbstick, and the PS1 later standardized dual analog control. However, the N64 technically supported dual analog before the PS1 via a two-controller setup, as seen in GoldenEye 64.
Regionally, the Super Nintendo dominated Japan and led by a couple million in North America, while the Genesis performed better in "other" market that represented only about a third the size of the U.S. market at the time. The most reliable sales data for the Genesis points to around 30-35 million units, including 1.5 million $50 bargain basement Genesis 3 models made by Majesco. By contrast, the Super Nintendo’s figure of 49.1 millions units sold is official and only includes proper first-party models.
In the end, the Super Nintendo outsold the Genesis by around 15-20 million units, had nearly a thousand more games, boasted the top-selling title of the generation, had far more million-sellers, likely sold hundreds of millions more games overall, and remains home to more titles consistently found on all Greatest Games of All Time lists to this day. Personal preference aside, the Super Nintendo was, by every major metric, the most successful console of the 16-bit era-an undeniable fact supported by the numbers.
Some of my favourite aspects of the SNES graphical capabilities are the beautiful backgrounds in the levels of sooooo many games.
Donkey kong country, the Power Rangers games, and Super Metroid come to mind specifically.
All of these games have such wonderful and imaginative backgrounds in the levels, and as kids we likely weren’t focused on that stuff, but instead we payed more attention to sprites and effects like Mode 7 Scaling.
Sooooo many great pieces of art, shown only as a backdrop…..
Have you ever explored the caves in Donkey Kong Country with your eyes?
Like really take your time and look around at all of the little nooks and textures.
The department store level in power rangers, specifically the outside of the building when you’re in the construction site, and you can see the city in the background with the tall buildings…..
Even bad games, like robocop 3 manage to pull off some BEAUTIFUL visuals as backgrounds.
I seriously ask each of you to take your time and actually LOOK at a game the next time you play.
You’ll be surprised at what you see.
To be honest, all the 16-bit era consoles (SNES, MD, PCE) have aged nicely, which is not something that I can say for the PS1/N64/Saturn era, as those were the first true 3D machines and they had some crude 3D graphics that do not look well today.
For example, I recently finished Monster World IV on Mega Drive. That is an incredibly good-looking game for the system, and it is certainly not the only one. Not to mention that nor the MD or the PCE had any enhancement chips used in their game carts, and everything that was on display, was 100% the work of the said console alone. So, I would put them right alongside the SNES without hesitation.
And the Neo Geo AES!
@DancesRainyStreets yeah, how could I forget that one 😂. The Neo Geo definitely aged gracefully, too bad that it was not a mainstream console because it was and still is ultra expensive.
Thank you for another great video. Hearing stories about the hardware and people involved is awesome. Keep up the awesome work.
Both SNES and Genesis were my favorite consoles with so many iconic games.
I remember the first time I ever saw a super nintendo. I was with my mother in a Walmart, and the SNES was just about to launch, and they had a display running Super Mario World. I remember grabbing the controller, which felt so alien compared to the NES controller. What were the weird buttons on the top for? Why were there so many buttons on the front? And Mario looked more amazing than ever, riding on the back of a... DINOSAUR?!
These days a new hardware generation barely looks different from the last one, but back then, every new generation was a mind-blowing upgrade. It would be a few years between first seeing the SNES and having one of my own, and it remains my favorite console in my favorite console generation.
The Super Nintendo was / is THE best console to ever launch. It had great vibrant colourful graphics, great sound. Most of all the massive varied library of great games. I doubt it will ever be topped.
Ah the usual Snes fan hyperbole as always, I knew it would see a comment like this immediately. But yes the Snes is really great, timelessly great I love the system but also so is the Genesis/Megadrive.
Yes Ken Kutaragi done did good with SNES sound chip
@@retrosoul8770 I agree the Megadrive is also fantastic. Infact, one my favourite games of all time is on it "Streets Of Rage 2". But Snes is best imo.
@@li0nhart4477 I don’t know why people insist on choosing what consoles are better when there’s no reason not to have allegiances to 30+ year old hardware.
You don't have to have allegiance to either. I still fire up MD and SNES literally today, but the later release and exclusives do give the edge to the SNES. I usually go to the GBA for most of the best SNES titles though.
Even not understanding most of these concepts, these technical videos of yours are the best.
Haven't watched it yet, but talking about the SNES, I know I am going to like it
You proper nailed this video man, awesome representation showing that this hardware is still breath takign in the right hands!
Thank you!!