The guy who programmed Toy Story, Mickey Mania and many others for the Genesis has a TH-cam channel called Coding Secrets, where he explains how he did all that wizardy.
@Ryu You should look up the channel Coding Secrets on TH-cam. It's a channel by one the programmers of both games. He goes into depth how all the effects were done on the games.
@@SegaLordX Joe Montana Sports talk 2 was best football games they served up in my view.where else can the Cincinnati Bengals actually win a superbowl..an against the 49ers!LMAO sad but true.
@@SegaLordX what is the best website to download roms for my raspberry pi. I really wanna look for some of these games you highlighted, including Lost World lol
@@SegaLordX , I think that Pier Solar and the Great Architects and Paprium need to be mentioned in this video, even IF they are not so-called "officially licensed" video games, and the reason for that is that they have done things that a Sega Genesis/Mega Drive should not be able to do AND that what they did, flawed games notwithstanding, was FAR more impressive than any of the games that are on this video.
@@SegaLordX The Coding Secrets TH-cam channel has one of the Traveller's Tales devs talk about many aspecs of programming for games he was involved with back in the day and how some crazy effects were achieved.
Toy Story's sprite scaling is probably the best of its kind on the SEGA Genesis. Makes you wonder how well ports of super-scaler arcade games would've looked w/just double or triple the mega.
The lack of 1:1 Super Scaler ports on either the Genesis or its add-ons like the 32X and Sega CD is baffling. The CD alone feels like it would be perfect for that, but Sega never did it.
@@SonofSethoitae - SEGA was always great at innovating when it came to hardware, both in arcades & home. However, when it came to commitment to software, it was very hit or miss. They quickly gave up if a console or peripheral didn't immediate sell like gangbusters.
@@Guernicaman True, it's just weird that they wouldn't use that as the initial approach to sell the systems. Especially considering how they designed and marketed the Genesis to be the "arcade at home". "Hey kids, here are all those arcade games you love in perfect detail" would be a far better selling point for the Sega CD than "hey kids, here are some blurry videos with an awkward adventure game attached".
@@SonofSethoitae - Indeed. Especially when it comes to the SEFA / MEGA CD's redbook audio. SEGA could've produced exclusives, such as an OutRun CD, Space Harrier CD, After Burner CD, Power Drift CD, & then a Streets of Rage CD, Golden Axe CD, Shinobi CD & so many other titles that weren't just the same game I played on my base console, w/a few extras. Exclusives like Sonic CD & Final Fight CD were reasons to purchase a peripheral like the SEGA CD, but you needed MORE of that - not less.
So story time with Revolution X, during the winter my sister played softball at a indoor softball building in the late 90s. They had the dream scenario of a completely free arcade upstairs (machines modded with coin buttons) for the intention of hosting birthday parties, but was free to use the rest of the time. They had solid game selection in the most part including Ghouls and Ghosts, Smash TV, Afterburner (yes full moving cockpit), double dragon, Heavy Barrel along with a bunch of others, including Revolution X. One night my Brother and Myself decided to tackle Revolution X, holy cow even with unlimited continues was that trail, by end game you are literally hitting the quarter button every 10 seconds it felt and the last boss is literally a half hour of constant shooting. We were so exhausted at that point and hands cramping that we actually started taking shifts to keep going (one would continue shooting with both guns while the other got a break.) We beat it, but totally not worth it. lol
That's a great story! Revo X; cabinet looks like T2, plays like your mum.... Shoiting cd's....Somewhat similar, we had three cabinets, including, Police 911, at out frat house. Some of the tech savvy brothers got into the dip switches and set it to free play. Nearly got on academic probation one semester because we had Police 911 tourneys until 5am for weeks! We would rob the quarters from the other two cabinets and distribute them evenly between all three so the games wouldn't get taken away.
Yeah, I remember beating it when emulated and realized quickly why I had never done so in the arcade. Crazy ass game that's totally not worth the commitment or the money to beat it.
Not going to say that Revolution X isn't a shit game, but you at least have to give it credit for having a cool and original idea. It was just executed poorly.
i remember playing though it at an acquaintance's house on sega console in the 90's. i thought it was fun and cool and all, because i just had an NES at home at that point.
With how smooth the 3rd person racing and 1st person maze sections were in Toy Story, I'm surprised they didn't adopt the implementation for more games...
The video on Gamehut where one of the devs goes into how they fit that video intro for Sonic 3d blast is amazing. Dude basically wrote his own video compression algorithm at a time when MPEG was brand new tech.
I've always been a Nintendo man back to the NES days but when it came to the Megadrive I absolutely loved it and I stuck by its side throughout the 90,s and to date...one of the best machines ever 🙏🏽🤘🏾🤘🏾🤘🏾🤘🏾
Even as a snes fanboy it's hard to argue either way. It was nice when competing consoles were completely different and not just homogenous underpowered gaming PCs
@@alanlee67 Seriously. Once it all went to commodity pc hardware and the same titles with a few exclusives, I stopped caring about console gaming. Honestly I think it peaked with the 16-bit wars. Everything else after that was just fumbling in the dark with new tech until nVidia and AMD started making good chips cheap.
I'm pretty sure KOF 2K3 was the largest Neo Geo game ever released (though not the last). Even had it's own standalone PCB released alongside the cartridge format.
It also helped that sculptured software developer mk3 and ultimate mk3 on Genesis. If sculptured software developed mk1 and mk2 for Genesis, they would have turned out better than they did.
Fun fact: Japan didn't produce 32 megabit cartridges, So Mortal Kombat 3 wasn't released there. Only Sega of America was producing 32 megabit cartridges and only about 20 games in all are that big. This is a big reason why Sonic 3 had to be split into 2 games. They attempted a 24 meg single cart but it still ended up 32 so technically its the only 32 megabit game in Japan
Yes the Genesis is a powerhouse. The big issue was the cost of the extra storage on the carts. It was a lot cheaper to press a CD than make a cartage with equal storage.
Sad part majority of the cd games did not utilize the genesis vdp nor the sega cd scaler chip. Which caused a sega cd games to look like generic genesis ports.
Same. I love most of SLX videos, but this topic is right up there as an app time fav. If you read this, a series would be great. Biggest SMS, GG, 32X, even SNES and NeoGeo would be great. I know we can Google but it's fascinating seeing the games back to back.
It really makes me wonder what kinds of games we would have been playing on the Genesis if ROM chip prices weren't sky-high at the time. You can see what they were able to do when they had more than 4mbit available. Streets of Rage 2 is a good example of what happens when the gloves come off (pun intended). Absolute top notch graphics, music, and gameplay.
@@voodooturbo Paprium... I guess NEOGEO is what you would play. It was the same base for processor as the MD but more colours and "unlimited" cartridge size.
@@_TheElMan Yeah but the games weren't that great lol. They tended to go the opposite direction. Had massive carts with a lot of colorful sprites but the games and gameplay were kinda meh. Mainly because it was arcade oriented and not so much the chill at home kind of game. That said there were a few good NG titles.
Why exactly? I've watched a few of his videos and he's beyond annoying. I simply stop watching every TH-camr who randomly screams/shouts in his videos for no apparent reason. Also, it was boring to constantly listen to him complaining how bad he is in literally every game he comments on. Why even play video games if you find them too hard xD?
There's one good thing UMK3 has on the Genesis. The ridiculous amount of glitches, and cashes you can discover just by screwing around with the character Rain. I mean you can spam his roundhouse kicks endlessly, he's untouchable in this version.
I remember my brother owning Pocahontas back then. It was hard for me to believe that it was playing on a sega genesis of all things. I guess because we also had shining in the darkness and I didn't understand the difference between the two games in terms of graphics and release at the time. Pocahontas still looks amazing till this day and I gotta go back to it someday.
Triple Play GOLD was the pinnacle of baseball on the Genesis. I loved how you could hammer the A, B, and C buttons after somebody scores to spam crowd cheers, horns, and chants. That was the best rubbing it in your friend's face in 2-player!
25:10 You can also divide by 8 the amount of megabits to roughly obtain the amount of megabytes. Streets of Rage 2 would be 2 megabytes, the 32 megabit games would be 4 megabytes and Flicky and Columns would be 0.125 megabytes each or 125 kilobytes
It turns confusing. -byte was always used for capacity or size, and -bits, for data transfer. Which at last is another tricky deceiving bussines tactic.
When lightning force released i marveled at the incredible graphics, parallax scrolling, and that awsome music. At the time i didn't understand the concept of megabytes, just that the game was noticeably enhanced. I actually didn't know about several titles you mentioned here x, like frank thomas baseball. Going to have to check that one out, and i never liked revolution x either lol. I also think one of the most impressive titles for me was phantasy star 4
Phantasy Star IV was a hefty cartridge too, I think it was 24 mb and it also had a save battery. I remember seeing it at Media Play for $99.99 USD, twice the price of other new games. And since I was playing the demo setup of a PlayStation in there at the time, that seemed crazy for a last gen game.
Lightning Force is one of my all time favorite Genesis games. the sound effects are memorable, especially the crazy "1up" which sounds like "Wabba" I play it on my phone all the time, along with the PSX game Einhander.
A co-worker and myself talked about this topic last summer only we conversed about the rom size of n64 and SNES games. Great topic to cover. I've been on a Genesis kick for the past four months.
The crowd is animated rather than static in the college basketball. It really makes a difference to me as that always drove me nuts with NBA Jam. Just my 2c of course, might not bother anyone else.
The release of Strider put the megabit count in games to the forefront; the magazines were giving that aspect so much hype that it compelled me to put Strider on my must have list just to experience what all the build up would ultimately produce. Fortunately the game was good also so the purchase was not regrettable. Then the Neo-Geo came along and made the mega marketing a central focus of justification of why their games were priced so high and out of most consumers' reasonable price range. Some attention getting games but not worth between 150 and 250 dollars each. I wish that Sega would have been as generous with granting extra megabits to Phantasy Star 2; the developers requested 8 megabits but it was denied and one of the consequences is the lack of backgrounds during the battle scenes, as well as the idea of 3D dungeons from the first game being discarded.
The chips themselves holding the memory were the main reasons for decisions being made. The genesis could have always had 100 MEGA SHOCK, but you're paying for hardware in the carts, not necessarily the work to fill it utilize that memory. Computer tech manufacturing techniques are utlimately what decides a consumer product's limitations because you can do whatever you want with computer tech right now, but it'll cost you. From a business perspective, they're always trying to hit that sweet spot of 'cool but not so pricey they can't move units'.
@@heavysystemsinc. In PSII's case upon release it was already priced at $84.99 which was uncharted territory up to that point for a 16-bit console game and earlier; I just feel that with how common that larger cartridges for Genesis became over the following year or two that Sega could have authorized the extra meager 2 megabits so the developers could have their vision fully implemented. Of course none of that stopped me from rushing out and buying it on the day of release or a couple of days later, whatever the case was.
I remember when either Mortal Kombat 3 or Ultimate was on the Sega Channel. If I recall correctly, not only did you have to pay an additional fee to "rent" the game, only half the roster could be downloaded to your Genesis in a single session due to the game size.
Excellent video SLX, it's a pity that storage was so damn expensive in both physical and dollar costs those days. Some of the newer Genesis games - particularly the 'Demons of Asteborg' game show what can be done when there are no real limitations to the cartridge size. At the same time, I did like your NBA Jam & College Slam comparison as it shows the developer using the added space just to add 'filler' content.
I just found out about your channel two days ago and I can’t get enough of this content. This channel is everything I wish I had as a kid, when all I played was Sonic, the Disney platformers , Streets of Rage and Ghostbusters. Replacing my Mega Drive with a Saturn in 1995 made me miss out on a ton of great games. Thank you for reminding us about these games. You’re really doing them justice by reviewing them in the context of the time they came out. Fantastic video.
I will say one nice thing about Revolution X. The full size arcade machine had a big bulky and pretty awesome plastic gun attached to it. It at least felt good to play in a physical sense, it rumbled and I think it had a speaker in it, if memory serves.
What i like about virtuafighter2, is the main character has the ability to open up the opponents defense..and strike it immediately..i wonder why todays fighting games didnt include that..
1. Demons of Asterborg's size is 117 MB?! Will the original console be able to handle such a large game? OO 2. Flicky is only 1MB? How did they fit so many stages in only 1MB? 3. I think Vectorman 1 and 2 could also be interesting here because they also had a 3D like platform and some other cool stuffs.
The Demons of Asteborg cart size is 15,335,424 bytes. This makes it a 122 megabit cartridge (megaBIT was the unit that was being used back in the day).
Games like Demons Of Asteborg have additional FPGA chips / logic on the cartridge to shuffle the memory around. Image it like multiple cartridges in one exchanging at the right time.
@@Zahir658 haha yeah true, but the processing power and memory requirements of this additional logic surpasses the power of the mega drive. Imagine modules like this costing more than the console :) But it's a nice way of breathing new life into classic consoles. I really like the approach.
I'm surprised by the number of 32 meg Genesis games in 1994. I was under the impression Donkey Kong Country was one of first games to be 32 MEG when it launched.
Thank you for acknowledging the horrendous music in SF The New Challengers. I was devastated back in the 90s when I first played it and forever hated it and could never play it as a result lol.
Looking back now it seems amazing on the systems of the time that they were able to fit certain kinds of games on cartridges especially and kind of adventure or RPG that took hours to play through and explore. Yes things took up less space then and there were countless reused graphical tiles and assets but they really did use the space so much more efficiently then. Although it did seem like 32 megs was the maximum most publishers were willing to go for the most part with a few exceptions and I think it was around 1993 when that was first hit for both the Mega Drive/Genesis and the SNES it's surprising just how expensive rom chips were at those sizes even after years of being in mass production.
I'm Brazilian and a friend had a Duke Nukem cartridge for Mega Drive, in the early 2000s. Since the first time I played, I don't know how Tec Toy managed to design that game.
I have no love for TH-camrs that keep on saying "oh, but on X console, it would have been better" "oh, on the next console we would have had a better experience"... Man efff that I HAD THE GENESIS, I DID NOT CARE ABOUT THE OTHER CONSOLES, I WANTED IT FOR MINE!!! Frikkin first world'ers...
I was blown away by Toy Story. That game got me through a lot of weekends as a kid. Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 was my shit, too. I wasn't very good at it, though. But I was impressed by what Williams and Midway did considering the technical limitations of the Genesis hardware.
There was only a handful of games that blew me away in the graphics department back then. The one game that floored me as a kid with its color pallet, great animation, sound and everything else was Yoshis Island. Hell it looked better than most 32 bit 2d offerings at the time.
Have you watched the GameHut channel here? The guy behind it worked on both Sonic 3D and Toy Story, and he has some interesting stories to tell about the programming techniques he used, particularly the crazy compression done to fit everything in.
Anytime Toughman Contest comes up, I always have to mention that the Genesis version has more ring girls in it, compared to the 32x version! Which is strange
Dude, super street fighter 2 on megadrive is so good! Its the best version around better than champion edition. Altho the music is different and thats because the soundboards changed on arcade, the older version uses the CPS1 sound while CPS2 sound is the one you will hear on the super and hyper edition, altho on the hyper edition on arcade you can actually pick and choose which sound you want thus leading to some quite unique rendition for stages that was designed for cps2 but is sounded through cps1
The cost of ROM carts and need for bigger games led to CD gaming. But then the consoles didn't have very large RAM capacity, and slow access CD drives! So it was give and take.
You know I was shocked Phantasy Star IV wasn't on here especially with it's 100$ at time of release price tag. But Nope as far I can tell it was a 24 meg title.
My mom hated Super Street Fighter II, she managed an arcade back in '93 and the coin-op for that title was right next to her office... music from the intro drove her nuts.
i am sure that being a nintendo kid, i never payed much attention to this, i don't think many nes or snes boasted this, or i was just oblivious to them, and end of the day, it is not the size that matters, but this was a nice video and an eye opener.
The Genesis port of Super Street Fighter 2 was closer to the arcade port even though the audio and voice samples took a step backwards, never the less it's still the most playable port on the Genesis.
Likes of Toy story showed the 32x was absolutely unnecessary and should have given the Mega drive at least another 2 years, holding a little brother role like the Master System did to the Mega drive.
I remember when Star Control came out it was 12 MEG and 4MEGs were dedicated to sound alone, and those 4 MEGs were used well, the voices and sound effects were fantastic
Getting crazy flashbacks of gaming magazines in the early to mid 90s. Still recall the playground arguments about how important game size was to overall quality.
Would love to see the same for Game Gear. Been playing some of these games after getting my older brother a GG for Christmas, and I am thoroughly impressed with what that thing could do!
I remember picking up Star Control back in the day, and seeing the box touting it as the first 12Mbit game. I also remember some articles about it in the various magazines at the time, showing off just how close it was to the Amiga original graphically (which it was... very close actually). Hearing the digitized sound effects that matched the Amiga stuff was pretty wild, too. Sadly, the music took a nosedive, though. Guess the 12Mbit wasn't quite enough to get them to match the Amiga tunes.
The folks at Tec-Toy really were something else with their SEGA stuff. They did us Brazilians proud. I remember looking for a Nintendo Wii back when it was released and seeing a Mega Drive 3 available on shelves. I can't imagine you could've found a brand new Mega Drive/Genesis of any kind in other countries in 2006 lol
That Tower Scene should not have been possible! They gameplay and childhood itself had me pinned to it, despite not being a big Mickey fan. So well worth it. One of my favorites of all time for platforming hop& bop!
Feels good seeing someone appreciates that SoR music too. That's my favorite for the Genesis. Besides SoR, loves the Batman soundtrack and the heavily underrated Decapattack.
A lot of publisher's restricted how many megabits the developer's could utilize on many titles and that's the reason we got so many underwhelming ports. The Genesis version of Another World is good but could you imagine if the dev team had 32 megabits at their disposal?! 😂
The true version of Another World for DOS was only one 1.44 megabytes HD floppy diskette, so around 12 megabits. If it was an underwhelming port for the 16-bit consoles, the available storage size wasn't the problem.
Hey, a channel called GameHut was a worker at traveller's tales, he actually goes into how he managed to squeeze the Sonic 3d Blast intro into a genesis cart without taking up a massive amount of the cartridge space!
5:05 My jaw dropped at that intro to Frank Thomas. I had no idea this existed. It only lasts a few seconds, but that looks like 60fps full motion video, even better than full motion video on Sega CD games! Also, those sprites are humongous! Truly impressive!
It's amazing to see what the Genesis can do when ROM size is not an issue. We have the homebrew ports of Darius, Shinobi and Splatterhouse is being worked on. I'd like to see somebody do another port of Ghouls N Ghosts and see how close to the arcade they can get with 32 Megabits (the arcade game is 32 Megabits). I think R-Type would be great on the Genesis too.
R type is a really good idea,id imagine a near perfect port on megadrive,kinda weird that it never happened seing as rtype was soo popular on sms .. shinobi looks really good so far too I would love to see someone fix street fighters horrible voices
@@patrickhawthorneLS It was usually due to gaming politics. The PC Engine had a great port so Irem probably didn't want to have a Megadrive port competing with their PC Engine port. Capcom used to avoid that too. They released Final Fight and Daimakaimura around 1994 for the Sharp X68000. Why no Final Fight for Saturn? It would have been great.
I wasn't expecting to see Pocahontas on this list. Not because it's not an excellent-looking and enjoyable game, but because it's so incredibly short. Just 4 levels, and not particularly long ones considering that's all there is. Still, what's there is solid.
When I started emulating back in the '90s I was completely floored by how small those games were. I could have an entire library of every console on my tiny 8 gig hard drive.
Another great video, it really shows how critical storage on those carts that was made clear in your Mortal Kombat Arcade Edition video and honestly some of those were seriously impressive for the hardware. looking forward to the next one! Keep up the great work!
The bigger size of carts was one of the reasons games improved on graphics and animation. Also a reason the Amiga 500 couldn't keep up with its tiny, slow floppies.
I’ve been playing video games since the pong days and it’s crazy that games nowadays can be one hundred hours plus to complete and look absolutely stunning. Looking back to the Master System and then the Mega Drive,so many games were gorgeous and felt crazy to have this little black box that gave us hours upon hours of awesomeness in our front rooms and bedroom’s
I think that especially on the first years of the 16bit era, developers actually needed cartridges that could fit bigger rom sizes. Golden Axe could have been better if the cartridge was bigger (although it is already excelent to me, there's some animation cuts and also the corpses staying on the ground, along with clearer voices). I think that a good example of this is the Turbografix CD. It didn't had any extra hardware (aside from the cd drive) and some games make it look like it's a completely different console. The same happens with the Genesis in regards of comparing game sizes. Streets of Rage 2 almost looks like a NeoGeo game when compared to the first Streets of Rage.
ROM chips were super expensive. That's why most titles were limited. The publisher basically told the developers how much ROM they were being given, so unless it was a halo title like Street Fighter II, it wasn't getting anything more than a 4mbit at most. By the end of the Genesis' life (1996), ROM prices had come down, so publishers were giving developers free reign to go wild with a 32Mbit cart.
I came to this channel after knowing Jon Burton's GameHut channel. In there, you get some explanation about how things were achieved in games like Sonic 3D and Toy Story (and others). My favourite one is his "Impossible Fading on the Sega Saturn" video.
Now 80's Comics. Half the shit Mark reviewed in his videos he knew nothing about like when he got a Japanese Mega Drive donated to him for review he couldn't figure out why western game carts wouldn't play and assumed it was broken. SegaLordX is now my number 1 viewing source, he's all I watch these days, reality TV on free to air can shove it. I hope SLX goes on to be the biggest TH-camr, hell he's more than earned it.
@@Oysterblade84 100%. Knowledge and experience drive this man’s channel and it’s the ultimate of guilty pleasure in terms of video gaming on this site. Also, CGR sold all of shit too. Heard he comes from a rich family, he didn’t need to be a gamer anymore.
This goes to show you how insane Neo Geo was for its cartridge sizes. While Genesis was bragging about 32 and 40 megs of power… Neo Geo was rocking several hundred powers of mega! LOL. They were the real hot dog! You would need a pair of steel balls just to play it. Keep in mind that Neo Geo MVS was created around 1988 by Alpha Denshi Corp. that’s roughly when the Mega Drive was created as well. I love Neo Geo for its unabashed gluttony…. But I STILL can’t afford one!!!
Back when I bought my Neo•Geo (12/1990), games were priced based on their rom size. So games such as League Bowling and Puzzled, at around 20Mbits, were $120, and games such as Top Player's Golf (62Mbits), were $170. It wasn't until SNK got into retailers, Babbage's and Electronics Boutique, that they all shot up to $199.99 MSRP. the $120 AES price point wasn't too much higher than some early Genesis games, when you think about it. (Revenge of Shinobi, Ghouls N Ghosts $65, Phantasy Star II $79.99, and later on, Virtua Racing, at $100.)
ROM chips were expensive, you could have had NeoGeo-ish games on the Genesis if rom space was no object (see: Paprium), but when your price point is $60, not $200, that simply isn't an option.
@@glenndoiron9317 The Neo•Geo was much more than "a Genesis with bigger carts" though. :). The video chip was much more powerful, as were the audio capabilities, which was basically CD quality (PCM), with 15 channels of audio (compared to only 6 on the Genesis). The Neo•Geo was a beast, with 380 on screen sprites, running with a lush 4,096 on screen colors (out of 65,536), at any one time, the Genesis... had 61 on screen colors (out of a palette of 512). The fast video RAM of the Neo•Geo allowed for extremely smooth animations. Not even the Sega Saturn or PlayStation could handle Neo•Geo ports, though the Saturn fared a bit better than the PS1, with the add-on 4MB RAM cart. I love the Genesis too, but the Neo•Geo is every bit, the beast, it's built up to be. The larger ROM carts, were important to hold all of those high color, multiple sprite animations, and, in some cases, several minutes of crystal clear, recorded voice, but even a smaller sized Neo•Geo cart, such as NAM-1975 (46mbit), at only 6mb larger than Super Street Fighter 2, on the Genesis, was very easy to recognize as "Neo•Geo quality".
@@videogameobsession Having owned an AES (and several games for it) back in the day, I know that the hardware is technically better in most categories. However, few neo games actually pushed its hardware to the level where you can say "Nope, not going to happen on the genesis without severe cutbacks, even with unlimited ROM space". We're starting to see what could have happened on the Genesis with these huge carts nowadays.
@@glenndoiron9317 If you're speaking of Paprium, I don't believe that would never be mistaken for a Neo-Geo game. At least not one of the ones that takes advantage of the Neo hardware. You should also judge console games by their original releases. I'm sure more could be pushed from the Neo-Geo if today's knowledge and tools were available back then.
Nintendo R&D had quite a talent for doing a lot with small rom sizes.. It's hard to believe Super Mario World was only half a Megabyte (4mb). To put that into perspective, you can put three full game roms of Super Mario World, onto a single PC floppy diskette.
Or go nuts with video game game shows! Jeopardy!, Jeopardy! Deluxe, Jeopardy! Sports, on one disc.... Jeopardy!, Family Feud, Wheel of Fortune.. 1disk.
5:06 - I only ever played the Game Gear version of Frank Thomas Big Hurt Baseball, and I have to say, I legitimately thought the intro to the Genesis version shown here was footage of Frank Thomas composited in front of a background image of the game's logo for use in a commercial or something from a distance.
I always thought SSF2's 40-megabit size was both amazingly large but also an unusual number. Apparently, according to segaretro, "the Mega Drive console can only safely access [32 megabits]. Capcom created a special bank switching mapper unit to get around this problem, with Super Street Fighter II being the only officially licensed game on the Mega Drive to use such technology." So that's why no other officially licensed games are bigger than 32 megs. As for what SSF2 did with the extra ROM space, at least they had extra frames of animation that the 32-megabit SNES version didn't. You can see them in the intro attract sequence when Ryu throws a hadouken at the camera; it's closer to the arcade than the SNES version, for sure. I think the Genesis version also animated the beat-up portraits on the continue screen, but these two nice features don't really add much to the gameplay, and the cost of the technology to increase cart size to 40 megs was transferred to the customer.
It's so interesting to think that modern Sega Genesis releases Come with 80-megabit cartridges and above. If only we had cart sizes like this back in the day :P
Makes me wish that the sega cd didn’t have the extra hardware driving up the cost of the extra unit to attach. Maybe just get as much ram in there as possible or something without driving the price too high. Seemed to do wonders for the PC Engine.
@Benjamin Owuye Jagun I'm talking about sega cd games of Malibu. I agree with the gem sound engines on Malibu genesis port sounding terrible especially batman returns.
It should be ray casting in the Duke 3D segment. Modern gaming has burned ray tracing into my brain so much I said that by mistake. Damn you Nvidia!
Nice! I look at the file size and multiply it by 8.
@@joaoclodoaudo5385 You mean the conversion from Megabit to Megabyte; raycasting and raytracing are rendering methods for 3D engines
Great topic sir, thank you! Never heard of comic slam before!
Can you please make the gameplay parts where there is no commentary last less? They are almost 20 seconds long! Like come on...
@@porkyminch5131 You know that you can skip ahead, right?
The guy who programmed Toy Story, Mickey Mania and many others for the Genesis has a TH-cam channel called Coding Secrets, where he explains how he did all that wizardy.
Yeah, he's one of the greats.
And he made Sonic 3D!
@@Alkvaarder 3D Sonic games, like the Adventure series, or Sonic 3D blast??
@@have_a_good_day420 3D Blast
Thanks for that info I subscribed to the Channel
That Lost World part where you are on the secondary part of bike being chased is seriously mindblowing for a Genesis game.
I'd take a whole game of just that!
That game really doesn't seem like a Mega Drive game, really impressive.
We knew this in 1997 and 1998, get your head out of Nintendo ass, boy
@@rustymixer2886 😅 so true
"MILFORD AMUSEMENT CENTER... WE'VE GOT THE FUN!" 🎶🎵
I remember playing Toy Story for Genesis during Christmas '95, and was blown away by the graphics.
I thought I was special for having a PlayStation and Battle Arena Toshinden. Looking back, I would have much rather been playing Toy Story, lol.
@Ryu You should look up the channel Coding Secrets on TH-cam. It's a channel by one the programmers of both games. He goes into depth how all the effects were done on the games.
@@mcameron1981 he even released a new directors cut 3d sonic that fixed 33 bugs and issues
I was too until I realized the gameplay was stiff,difficult and not as smooth as dat booger man .
@Ryu the sodium was 🤤 on toy story too, like comix zone
Discovered recently that GameSack is actually a big fan of SegaLordX. So, allow me to say.... MEGA-POWER!
I don't know Joe personally, but I was a fan of his channel from way back. Good stuff.
@@SegaLordX he mentioned your channel in hist last (or the one before) video. Definitely one of the coolest guys in the retro scene.
At one point Game Sack switched to a lower cart size. That's why its down to one host and lost the intro fart sound.
@@SomeOrangeCat same sack, smaller package.
@@SegaLordX Joe Montana Sports talk 2 was best football games they served up in my view.where else can the Cincinnati Bengals actually win a superbowl..an against the 49ers!LMAO sad but true.
I can never get over how amazing the lost world looks.
Yup. That river rafting scene beats just about anything on the Sega CD outside of Batman Returns.
@@SegaLordX thunderhawk?
@@SegaLordX what is the best website to download roms for my raspberry pi. I really wanna look for some of these games you highlighted, including Lost World lol
@@SegaLordX , I think that Pier Solar and the Great Architects and Paprium need to be mentioned in this video, even IF they are not so-called "officially licensed" video games, and the reason for that is that they have done things that a Sega Genesis/Mega Drive should not be able to do AND that what they did, flawed games notwithstanding, was FAR more impressive than any of the games that are on this video.
That Toy Story footage is amazing. Reminds me a bit of Clockwork Knight on the Saturn. That's super impressive visuals for a Megadrive game.
First time I played it I thought it had a special chip in it. But no, that's all software rendering.
@@SegaLordX The Coding Secrets TH-cam channel has one of the Traveller's Tales devs talk about many aspecs of programming for games he was involved with back in the day and how some crazy effects were achieved.
Toy Story's sprite scaling is probably the best of its kind on the SEGA Genesis. Makes you wonder how well ports of super-scaler arcade games would've looked w/just double or triple the mega.
The lack of 1:1 Super Scaler ports on either the Genesis or its add-ons like the 32X and Sega CD is baffling. The CD alone feels like it would be perfect for that, but Sega never did it.
@@SonofSethoitae - SEGA was always great at innovating when it came to hardware, both in arcades & home. However, when it came to commitment to software, it was very hit or miss. They quickly gave up if a console or peripheral didn't immediate sell like gangbusters.
@@Guernicaman True, it's just weird that they wouldn't use that as the initial approach to sell the systems. Especially considering how they designed and marketed the Genesis to be the "arcade at home".
"Hey kids, here are all those arcade games you love in perfect detail" would be a far better selling point for the Sega CD than "hey kids, here are some blurry videos with an awkward adventure game attached".
@@SonofSethoitae - Indeed. Especially when it comes to the SEFA / MEGA CD's redbook audio. SEGA could've produced exclusives, such as an OutRun CD, Space Harrier CD, After Burner CD, Power Drift CD, & then a Streets of Rage CD, Golden Axe CD, Shinobi CD & so many other titles that weren't just the same game I played on my base console, w/a few extras. Exclusives like Sonic CD & Final Fight CD were reasons to purchase a peripheral like the SEGA CD, but you needed MORE of that - not less.
So story time with Revolution X, during the winter my sister played softball at a indoor softball building in the late 90s. They had the dream scenario of a completely free arcade upstairs (machines modded with coin buttons) for the intention of hosting birthday parties, but was free to use the rest of the time. They had solid game selection in the most part including Ghouls and Ghosts, Smash TV, Afterburner (yes full moving cockpit), double dragon, Heavy Barrel along with a bunch of others, including Revolution X. One night my Brother and Myself decided to tackle Revolution X, holy cow even with unlimited continues was that trail, by end game you are literally hitting the quarter button every 10 seconds it felt and the last boss is literally a half hour of constant shooting. We were so exhausted at that point and hands cramping that we actually started taking shifts to keep going (one would continue shooting with both guns while the other got a break.) We beat it, but totally not worth it. lol
👍👍
That's a great story! Revo X; cabinet looks like T2, plays like your mum.... Shoiting cd's....Somewhat similar, we had three cabinets, including, Police 911, at out frat house. Some of the tech savvy brothers got into the dip switches and set it to free play. Nearly got on academic probation one semester because we had Police 911 tourneys until 5am for weeks! We would rob the quarters from the other two cabinets and distribute them evenly between all three so the games wouldn't get taken away.
Yeah, I remember beating it when emulated and realized quickly why I had never done so in the arcade. Crazy ass game that's totally not worth the commitment or the money to beat it.
Not going to say that Revolution X isn't a shit game, but you at least have to give it credit for having a cool and original idea. It was just executed poorly.
i remember playing though it at an acquaintance's house on sega console in the 90's. i thought it was fun and cool and all, because i just had an NES at home at that point.
With how smooth the 3rd person racing and 1st person maze sections were in Toy Story, I'm surprised they didn't adopt the implementation for more games...
Had it not been so late in the life of the Genesis, I could see the developer using them many more times.
The video on Gamehut where one of the devs goes into how they fit that video intro for Sonic 3d blast is amazing. Dude basically wrote his own video compression algorithm at a time when MPEG was brand new tech.
I've always been a Nintendo man back to the NES days but when it came to the Megadrive I absolutely loved it and I stuck by its side throughout the 90,s and to date...one of the best machines ever 🙏🏽🤘🏾🤘🏾🤘🏾🤘🏾
Even as a snes fanboy it's hard to argue either way. It was nice when competing consoles were completely different and not just homogenous underpowered gaming PCs
@@alanlee67 Seriously. Once it all went to commodity pc hardware and the same titles with a few exclusives, I stopped caring about console gaming. Honestly I think it peaked with the 16-bit wars. Everything else after that was just fumbling in the dark with new tech until nVidia and AMD started making good chips cheap.
Dat FM synth!
A Neo Geo version of this video would be interesting. I was always curious to see the new, high-meg, Neo Geo arcade games.
Late generation Neo-Geo games are astonishingly good looking, KoF 2003, Garou Mark of the Wolves, Sengoku 3...
The later Neo Geo titles get absolutely crazy with megabit size. The biggest one (one of the later KoF games iirc) is over 700 megs!
I'm pretty sure KOF 2K3 was the largest Neo Geo game ever released (though not the last). Even had it's own standalone PCB released alongside the cartridge format.
It also helped that sculptured software developer mk3 and ultimate mk3 on Genesis. If sculptured software developed mk1 and mk2 for Genesis, they would have turned out better than they did.
Fun fact: Japan didn't produce 32 megabit cartridges, So Mortal Kombat 3 wasn't released there. Only Sega of America was producing 32 megabit cartridges and only about 20 games in all are that big. This is a big reason why Sonic 3 had to be split into 2 games. They attempted a 24 meg single cart but it still ended up 32 so technically its the only 32 megabit game in Japan
Yes the Genesis is a powerhouse. The big issue was the cost of the extra storage on the carts. It was a lot cheaper to press a CD than make a cartage with equal storage.
Sad part majority of the cd games did not utilize the genesis vdp nor the sega cd scaler chip. Which caused a sega cd games to look like generic genesis ports.
Plus there was a cartridge shortage in the 80s and 90s
This has to be one of my favorite topics when it comes to how gaming hardware had progress
Same. I love most of SLX videos, but this topic is right up there as an app time fav. If you read this, a series would be great. Biggest SMS, GG, 32X, even SNES and NeoGeo would be great. I know we can Google but it's fascinating seeing the games back to back.
It really makes me wonder what kinds of games we would have been playing on the Genesis if ROM chip prices weren't sky-high at the time. You can see what they were able to do when they had more than 4mbit available. Streets of Rage 2 is a good example of what happens when the gloves come off (pun intended). Absolute top notch graphics, music, and gameplay.
@@voodooturbo Paprium... I guess NEOGEO is what you would play. It was the same base for processor as the MD but more colours and "unlimited" cartridge size.
@@_TheElMan Yeah but the games weren't that great lol. They tended to go the opposite direction. Had massive carts with a lot of colorful sprites but the games and gameplay were kinda meh. Mainly because it was arcade oriented and not so much the chill at home kind of game. That said there were a few good NG titles.
All we needed is Joe from Game Sack to scream “Mega Power!”
A nice spot for that woulda been during the Duke Nukem part , after the developers are complimented on their giant sacks! 😹
Why exactly? I've watched a few of his videos and he's beyond annoying. I simply stop watching every TH-camr who randomly screams/shouts in his videos for no apparent reason.
Also, it was boring to constantly listen to him complaining how bad he is in literally every game he comments on. Why even play video games if you find them too hard xD?
"MEGAAAAA POWERRRRR" popped into my head multiple times through the video
@@budyll1 He rarely yells. He's not the angry videogame nerd. Game Sack is mostly quiet.
There's one good thing UMK3 has on the Genesis. The ridiculous amount of glitches, and cashes you can discover just by screwing around with the character Rain. I mean you can spam his roundhouse kicks endlessly, he's untouchable in this version.
I remember my brother owning Pocahontas back then. It was hard for me to believe that it was playing on a sega genesis of all things. I guess because we also had shining in the darkness and I didn't understand the difference between the two games in terms of graphics and release at the time.
Pocahontas still looks amazing till this day and I gotta go back to it someday.
Triple Play GOLD was the pinnacle of baseball on the Genesis. I loved how you could hammer the A, B, and C buttons after somebody scores to spam crowd cheers, horns, and chants. That was the best rubbing it in your friend's face in 2-player!
25:10 You can also divide by 8 the amount of megabits to roughly obtain the amount of megabytes. Streets of Rage 2 would be 2 megabytes, the 32 megabit games would be 4 megabytes and Flicky and Columns would be 0.125 megabytes each or 125 kilobytes
It turns confusing. -byte was always used for capacity or size, and -bits, for data transfer. Which at last is another tricky deceiving bussines tactic.
When lightning force released i marveled at the incredible graphics, parallax scrolling, and that awsome music. At the time i didn't understand the concept of megabytes, just that the game was noticeably enhanced. I actually didn't know about several titles you mentioned here x, like frank thomas baseball. Going to have to check that one out, and i never liked revolution x either lol. I also think one of the most impressive titles for me was phantasy star 4
Phantasy Star IV was a hefty cartridge too, I think it was 24 mb and it also had a save battery. I remember seeing it at Media Play for $99.99 USD, twice the price of other new games. And since I was playing the demo setup of a PlayStation in there at the time, that seemed crazy for a last gen game.
Lightning Force is one of my all time favorite Genesis games. the sound effects are memorable, especially the crazy "1up" which sounds like "Wabba" I play it on my phone all the time, along with the PSX game Einhander.
Now you're playing with Power, Mega Power!
Phantasy Star II only being 6 Megabits and IV only being 24 surprises me.
A co-worker and myself talked about this topic last summer only we conversed about the rom size of n64 and SNES games. Great topic to cover. I've been on a Genesis kick for the past four months.
I love tracking down the biggest carts for systems and seeing how the space has been used. Thanks for producing this.
The crowd is animated rather than static in the college basketball. It really makes a difference to me as that always drove me nuts with NBA Jam. Just my 2c of course, might not bother anyone else.
NBA Jam Tournament Edition on Genesis has animated crowds and improved announcer like College Slam compared to Vanilla NBA Jam.
Fun video, as always! By the way, it's worth pointing out that 1 Megabyte is 8 Megabits.
That is a great point and I think SLX should have made that clear. So 32 megabits is what 4 megabytes?
@@marccaselle8108 Yep. That's right. Thanks for the reply!
It fills my heart with joy to see SLX mention Demons of Asteborg, that game is awesome. I backed it on Kickstarter!
The release of Strider put the megabit count in games to the forefront; the magazines were giving that aspect so much hype that it compelled me to put Strider on my must have list just to experience what all the build up would ultimately produce. Fortunately the game was good also so the purchase was not regrettable. Then the Neo-Geo came along and made the mega marketing a central focus of justification of why their games were priced so high and out of most consumers' reasonable price range. Some attention getting games but not worth between 150 and 250 dollars each.
I wish that Sega would have been as generous with granting extra megabits to Phantasy Star 2; the developers requested 8 megabits but it was denied and one of the consequences is the lack of backgrounds during the battle scenes, as well as the idea of 3D dungeons from the first game being discarded.
The chips themselves holding the memory were the main reasons for decisions being made. The genesis could have always had 100 MEGA SHOCK, but you're paying for hardware in the carts, not necessarily the work to fill it utilize that memory. Computer tech manufacturing techniques are utlimately what decides a consumer product's limitations because you can do whatever you want with computer tech right now, but it'll cost you. From a business perspective, they're always trying to hit that sweet spot of 'cool but not so pricey they can't move units'.
@@heavysystemsinc. In PSII's case upon release it was already priced at $84.99 which was uncharted territory up to that point for a 16-bit console game and earlier; I just feel that with how common that larger cartridges for Genesis became over the following year or two that Sega could have authorized the extra meager 2 megabits so the developers could have their vision fully implemented. Of course none of that stopped me from rushing out and buying it on the day of release or a couple of days later, whatever the case was.
Your channel is relaxing for me
I remember when either Mortal Kombat 3 or Ultimate was on the Sega Channel. If I recall correctly, not only did you have to pay an additional fee to "rent" the game, only half the roster could be downloaded to your Genesis in a single session due to the game size.
Now an unofficial larger Sega Genesis games would be nice to see. There are some pretty interesting stuff.
Excellent video SLX, it's a pity that storage was so damn expensive in both physical and dollar costs those days. Some of the newer Genesis games - particularly the 'Demons of Asteborg' game show what can be done when there are no real limitations to the cartridge size.
At the same time, I did like your NBA Jam & College Slam comparison as it shows the developer using the added space just to add 'filler' content.
I just found out about your channel two days ago and I can’t get enough of this content. This channel is everything I wish I had as a kid, when all I played was Sonic, the Disney platformers , Streets of Rage and Ghostbusters. Replacing my Mega Drive with a Saturn in 1995 made me miss out on a ton of great games. Thank you for reminding us about these games. You’re really doing them justice by reviewing them in the context of the time they came out. Fantastic video.
Every day I learn more and more about Sega!
Thanks for these Awesome Videos!!
Glad you like them!
I will say one nice thing about Revolution X. The full size arcade machine had a big bulky and pretty awesome plastic gun attached to it. It at least felt good to play in a physical sense, it rumbled and I think it had a speaker in it, if memory serves.
Super Street Fighter II has two wonderful hacks available. Pyron's color hack, and a sound driver fix.
What i like about virtuafighter2, is the main character has the ability to open up the opponents defense..and strike it immediately..i wonder why todays fighting games didnt include that..
1. Demons of Asterborg's size is 117 MB?! Will the original console be able to handle such a large game? OO
2. Flicky is only 1MB? How did they fit so many stages in only 1MB?
3. I think Vectorman 1 and 2 could also be interesting here because they also had a 3D like platform and some other cool stuffs.
The Demons of Asteborg cart size is 15,335,424 bytes. This makes it a 122 megabit cartridge (megaBIT was the unit that was being used back in the day).
@@glenndoiron9317 That is huge! Can it be played on the original console?
Games like Demons Of Asteborg have additional FPGA chips / logic on the cartridge to shuffle the memory around. Image it like multiple cartridges in one exchanging at the right time.
@@stefanheiler2329 Dang. If only they had known how to do that in its console time
@@Zahir658 haha yeah true, but the processing power and memory requirements of this additional logic surpasses the power of the mega drive. Imagine modules like this costing more than the console :) But it's a nice way of breathing new life into classic consoles. I really like the approach.
I had the regular MK3.. loved it on Genesis.. also had the street fighter super 2.. also loved it so many classics what a great time.
What a delightful way to spend my insomnia time. Thank you, SLX. :)
Any time!
Yeah, 2am. I needed something to watch.
Haha, I was gonna say, where's Revolution X?? I love that game!!
My friend in the video is on the other side of the fence on this one. To each's own.
I'm surprised by the number of 32 meg Genesis games in 1994. I was under the impression Donkey Kong Country was one of first games to be 32 MEG when it launched.
Wow The Lost World looks incredible!
The biggest game I remember buying was Phantasy Star IV. it was 24 megabits and cost $100. I wasn't disappointed
Thank you for acknowledging the horrendous music in SF The New Challengers. I was devastated back in the 90s when I first played it and forever hated it and could never play it as a result lol.
Looking back now it seems amazing on the systems of the time that they were able to fit certain kinds of games on cartridges especially and kind of adventure or RPG that took hours to play through and explore. Yes things took up less space then and there were countless reused graphical tiles and assets but they really did use the space so much more efficiently then. Although it did seem like 32 megs was the maximum most publishers were willing to go for the most part with a few exceptions and I think it was around 1993 when that was first hit for both the Mega Drive/Genesis and the SNES it's surprising just how expensive rom chips were at those sizes even after years of being in mass production.
I'm Brazilian and a friend had a Duke Nukem cartridge for Mega Drive, in the early 2000s. Since the first time I played, I don't know how Tec Toy managed to design that game.
There is also Gunstar Heroes, only 8 Megs for one of the best and spectacular games of the 16 bit era.
I have no love for TH-camrs that keep on saying "oh, but on X console, it would have been better" "oh, on the next console we would have had a better experience"... Man efff that I HAD THE GENESIS, I DID NOT CARE ABOUT THE OTHER CONSOLES, I WANTED IT FOR MINE!!!
Frikkin first world'ers...
I was blown away by Toy Story. That game got me through a lot of weekends as a kid.
Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 was my shit, too. I wasn't very good at it, though. But I was impressed by what Williams and Midway did considering the technical limitations of the Genesis hardware.
There was only a handful of games that blew me away in the graphics department back then. The one game that floored me as a kid with its color pallet, great animation, sound and everything else was Yoshis Island. Hell it looked better than most 32 bit 2d offerings at the time.
Any video that starts off with a Street of Rage song is bound to be awesome - great vid!
That soundtrack is damn near perfect.
@@SegaLordX Strafefox did a good video on SoR and it's music. Worth checking
Have you watched the GameHut channel here? The guy behind it worked on both Sonic 3D and Toy Story, and he has some interesting stories to tell about the programming techniques he used, particularly the crazy compression done to fit everything in.
Good wholesome SEGA content 😌 I never paid attention to the sizes until this video 😲 this is really good to take note of
aah the good old days when the leap in technology and graphics between the old and new generation of consoles was massive
Anytime Toughman Contest comes up, I always have to mention that the Genesis version has more ring girls in it, compared to the 32x version! Which is strange
Dude, super street fighter 2 on megadrive is so good! Its the best version around better than champion edition. Altho the music is different and thats because the soundboards changed on arcade, the older version uses the CPS1 sound while CPS2 sound is the one you will hear on the super and hyper edition, altho on the hyper edition on arcade you can actually pick and choose which sound you want thus leading to some quite unique rendition for stages that was designed for cps2 but is sounded through cps1
The cost of ROM carts and need for bigger games led to CD gaming. But then the consoles didn't have very large RAM capacity, and slow access CD drives! So it was give and take.
Ah yes, an episode for Joe from GameSack!
I love the topic of Mega Power, this video is awesome.
You know I was shocked Phantasy Star IV wasn't on here especially with it's 100$ at time of release price tag. But Nope as far I can tell it was a 24 meg title.
Worth every damn penny.
My mom hated Super Street Fighter II, she managed an arcade back in '93 and the coin-op for that title was right next to her office... music from the intro drove her nuts.
i am sure that being a nintendo kid, i never payed much attention to this, i don't think many nes or snes boasted this, or i was just oblivious to them, and end of the day, it is not the size that matters, but this was a nice video and an eye opener.
I had no idea Duke Nukem was even on the Genesis...
The Genesis port of Super Street Fighter 2 was closer to the arcade port even though the audio and voice samples took a step backwards, never the less it's still the most playable port on the Genesis.
Likes of Toy story showed the 32x was absolutely unnecessary and should have given the Mega drive at least another 2 years, holding a little brother role like the Master System did to the Mega drive.
I remember when Star Control came out it was 12 MEG and 4MEGs were dedicated to sound alone, and those 4 MEGs were used well, the voices and sound effects were fantastic
Getting crazy flashbacks of gaming magazines in the early to mid 90s. Still recall the playground arguments about how important game size was to overall quality.
Would love to see the same for Game Gear. Been playing some of these games after getting my older brother a GG for Christmas, and I am thoroughly impressed with what that thing could do!
Just remember when u see people going nuts over a ps 5.
That when we were kids 8 meg was all it took to make a kid happy.
I remember picking up Star Control back in the day, and seeing the box touting it as the first 12Mbit game. I also remember some articles about it in the various magazines at the time, showing off just how close it was to the Amiga original graphically (which it was... very close actually). Hearing the digitized sound effects that matched the Amiga stuff was pretty wild, too. Sadly, the music took a nosedive, though. Guess the 12Mbit wasn't quite enough to get them to match the Amiga tunes.
The folks at Tec-Toy really were something else with their SEGA stuff. They did us Brazilians proud. I remember looking for a Nintendo Wii back when it was released and seeing a Mega Drive 3 available on shelves. I can't imagine you could've found a brand new Mega Drive/Genesis of any kind in other countries in 2006 lol
That Tower Scene should not have been possible! They gameplay and childhood itself had me pinned to it, despite not being a big Mickey fan. So well worth it. One of my favorites of all time for platforming hop& bop!
Feels good seeing someone appreciates that SoR music too. That's my favorite for the Genesis. Besides SoR, loves the Batman soundtrack and the heavily underrated Decapattack.
A lot of publisher's restricted how many megabits the developer's could utilize on many titles and that's the reason we got so many underwhelming ports. The Genesis version of Another World is good but could you imagine if the dev team had 32 megabits at their disposal?! 😂
It was ALL about cartridge cost.
The true version of Another World for DOS was only one 1.44 megabytes HD floppy diskette, so around 12 megabits. If it was an underwhelming port for the 16-bit consoles, the available storage size wasn't the problem.
As soon as I saw the title I immediately thought of ssf2. This wasn't just a trip down memory lane, but a real eye opener. Thanks a ton.
Terrific video. Since I got my wireless genesis controller ive been obsessed with genesis and watching heaps of your videos. This one was terrific.
Hey, a channel called GameHut was a worker at traveller's tales, he actually goes into how he managed to squeeze the Sonic 3d Blast intro into a genesis cart without taking up a massive amount of the cartridge space!
5:05 My jaw dropped at that intro to Frank Thomas. I had no idea this existed. It only lasts a few seconds, but that looks like 60fps full motion video, even better than full motion video on Sega CD games! Also, those sprites are humongous! Truly impressive!
It's amazing to see what the Genesis can do when ROM size is not an issue. We have the homebrew ports of Darius, Shinobi and Splatterhouse is being worked on. I'd like to see somebody do another port of Ghouls N Ghosts and see how close to the arcade they can get with 32 Megabits (the arcade game is 32 Megabits). I think R-Type would be great on the Genesis too.
@Orzuum Yes, I'm subscribed to him. And take a look at the Master Linkuei channel.
R type is a really good idea,id imagine a near perfect port on megadrive,kinda weird that it never happened seing as rtype was soo popular on sms .. shinobi looks really good so far too
I would love to see someone fix street fighters horrible voices
@@patrickhawthorneLS
It was usually due to gaming politics. The PC Engine had a great port so Irem probably didn't want to have a Megadrive port competing with their PC Engine port. Capcom used to avoid that too. They released Final Fight and Daimakaimura around 1994 for the Sharp X68000. Why no Final Fight for Saturn? It would have been great.
Have you seen what has been done recently with Genesis Mortal Kombat (Mortal Kombat Arcade Edition)?
I was disappointed when 32Mb roms started coming out, because my Super Magic Drive (copier) had 24Mbits of DRAM. 😈😄
This touches all my hardware nerd buttons.
I wasn't expecting to see Pocahontas on this list. Not because it's not an excellent-looking and enjoyable game, but because it's so incredibly short. Just 4 levels, and not particularly long ones considering that's all there is. Still, what's there is solid.
When I started emulating back in the '90s I was completely floored by how small those games were. I could have an entire library of every console on my tiny 8 gig hard drive.
Another great video, it really shows how critical storage on those carts that was made clear in your Mortal Kombat Arcade Edition video and honestly some of those were seriously impressive for the hardware. looking forward to the next one! Keep up the great work!
The bigger size of carts was one of the reasons games improved on graphics and animation. Also a reason the Amiga 500 couldn't keep up with its tiny, slow floppies.
But the Amiga has games on 15+ floppies. A game like Beneath A Steel Sky can't be done on 16-bit consoles.
If only Sega ported arcade super scalers with these added megs.
Those games would have been perfect for the Sega CD, no size limitations and scaling technology in the hardware.
I’ve been playing video games since the pong days and it’s crazy that games nowadays can be one hundred hours plus to complete and look absolutely stunning. Looking back to the Master System and then the Mega Drive,so many games were gorgeous and felt crazy to have this little black box that gave us hours upon hours of awesomeness in our front rooms and bedroom’s
Love your channel man. We were a snes household so im seeing lots of these for the first time.
Same. And now im playing Snes game hacks and randomisera wich make the roms 60 Megabyte large.
I think that especially on the first years of the 16bit era, developers actually needed cartridges that could fit bigger rom sizes. Golden Axe could have been better if the cartridge was bigger (although it is already excelent to me, there's some animation cuts and also the corpses staying on the ground, along with clearer voices). I think that a good example of this is the Turbografix CD. It didn't had any extra hardware (aside from the cd drive) and some games make it look like it's a completely different console. The same happens with the Genesis in regards of comparing game sizes. Streets of Rage 2 almost looks like a NeoGeo game when compared to the first Streets of Rage.
ROM chips were super expensive. That's why most titles were limited. The publisher basically told the developers how much ROM they were being given, so unless it was a halo title like Street Fighter II, it wasn't getting anything more than a 4mbit at most. By the end of the Genesis' life (1996), ROM prices had come down, so publishers were giving developers free reign to go wild with a 32Mbit cart.
I came to this channel after knowing Jon Burton's GameHut channel. In there, you get some explanation about how things were achieved in games like Sonic 3D and Toy Story (and others). My favourite one is his "Impossible Fading on the Sega Saturn" video.
Fucking one of the best channels on this site alone. ReviewTechUSA and ClassicGameRoom ain’t got shit on you
Now 80's Comics. Half the shit Mark reviewed in his videos he knew nothing about like when he got a Japanese Mega Drive donated to him for review he couldn't figure out why western game carts wouldn't play and assumed it was broken.
SegaLordX is now my number 1 viewing source, he's all I watch these days, reality TV on free to air can shove it. I hope SLX goes on to be the biggest TH-camr, hell he's more than earned it.
@@Oysterblade84 100%. Knowledge and experience drive this man’s channel and it’s the ultimate of guilty pleasure in terms of video gaming on this site. Also, CGR sold all of shit too. Heard he comes from a rich family, he didn’t need to be a gamer anymore.
As to the size difference, Duke 3D on the Mega Drive likely didn't use compression, while Doom 32X did.
This goes to show you how insane Neo Geo was for its cartridge sizes. While Genesis was bragging about 32 and 40 megs of power… Neo Geo was rocking several hundred powers of mega! LOL. They were the real hot dog! You would need a pair of steel balls just to play it. Keep in mind that Neo Geo MVS was created around 1988 by Alpha Denshi Corp. that’s roughly when the Mega Drive was created as well. I love Neo Geo for its unabashed gluttony…. But I STILL can’t afford one!!!
Back when I bought my Neo•Geo (12/1990), games were priced based on their rom size. So games such as League Bowling and Puzzled, at around 20Mbits, were $120, and games such as Top Player's Golf (62Mbits), were $170. It wasn't until SNK got into retailers, Babbage's and Electronics Boutique, that they all shot up to $199.99 MSRP. the $120 AES price point wasn't too much higher than some early Genesis games, when you think about it. (Revenge of Shinobi, Ghouls N Ghosts $65, Phantasy Star II $79.99, and later on, Virtua Racing, at $100.)
ROM chips were expensive, you could have had NeoGeo-ish games on the Genesis if rom space was no object (see: Paprium), but when your price point is $60, not $200, that simply isn't an option.
@@glenndoiron9317 The Neo•Geo was much more than "a Genesis with bigger carts" though. :). The video chip was much more powerful, as were the audio capabilities, which was basically CD quality (PCM), with 15 channels of audio (compared to only 6 on the Genesis). The Neo•Geo was a beast, with 380 on screen sprites, running with a lush 4,096 on screen colors (out of 65,536), at any one time, the Genesis... had 61 on screen colors (out of a palette of 512). The fast video RAM of the Neo•Geo allowed for extremely smooth animations. Not even the Sega Saturn or PlayStation could handle Neo•Geo ports, though the Saturn fared a bit better than the PS1, with the add-on 4MB RAM cart. I love the Genesis too, but the Neo•Geo is every bit, the beast, it's built up to be.
The larger ROM carts, were important to hold all of those high color, multiple sprite animations, and, in some cases, several minutes of crystal clear, recorded voice, but even a smaller sized Neo•Geo cart, such as NAM-1975 (46mbit), at only 6mb larger than Super Street Fighter 2, on the Genesis, was very easy to recognize as "Neo•Geo quality".
@@videogameobsession Having owned an AES (and several games for it) back in the day, I know that the hardware is technically better in most categories. However, few neo games actually pushed its hardware to the level where you can say "Nope, not going to happen on the genesis without severe cutbacks, even with unlimited ROM space". We're starting to see what could have happened on the Genesis with these huge carts nowadays.
@@glenndoiron9317 If you're speaking of Paprium, I don't believe that would never be mistaken for a Neo-Geo game. At least not one of the ones that takes advantage of the Neo hardware. You should also judge console games by their original releases. I'm sure more could be pushed from the Neo-Geo if today's knowledge and tools were available back then.
Nintendo R&D had quite a talent for doing a lot with small rom sizes.. It's hard to believe Super Mario World was only half a Megabyte (4mb). To put that into perspective, you can put three full game roms of Super Mario World, onto a single PC floppy diskette.
Yes, you can fit Super Mario World, Gradius III and F-Zero on a disk.
@@simon41978 Yep.. Or Super Mario World, Super Mario Kart, and Super Smash TV.
Or go nuts with video game game shows!
Jeopardy!, Jeopardy! Deluxe, Jeopardy! Sports, on one disc....
Jeopardy!, Family Feud, Wheel of Fortune.. 1disk.
Pocahontas is one of the most beautiful / visually impressive Genesis games ever.
Looking at pocahontas, kolibri could've bee easily done on the genesis and maybe the sega cd as a exclusive port with the right developers.
5:06 - I only ever played the Game Gear version of Frank Thomas Big Hurt Baseball, and I have to say, I legitimately thought the intro to the Genesis version shown here was footage of Frank Thomas composited in front of a background image of the game's logo for use in a commercial or something from a distance.
It always impressed me as well.
I always thought SSF2's 40-megabit size was both amazingly large but also an unusual number. Apparently, according to segaretro, "the Mega Drive console can only safely access [32 megabits]. Capcom created a special bank switching mapper unit to get around this problem, with Super Street Fighter II being the only officially licensed game on the Mega Drive to use such technology." So that's why no other officially licensed games are bigger than 32 megs.
As for what SSF2 did with the extra ROM space, at least they had extra frames of animation that the 32-megabit SNES version didn't. You can see them in the intro attract sequence when Ryu throws a hadouken at the camera; it's closer to the arcade than the SNES version, for sure. I think the Genesis version also animated the beat-up portraits on the continue screen, but these two nice features don't really add much to the gameplay, and the cost of the technology to increase cart size to 40 megs was transferred to the customer.
I never understood why Capcom didn't release SSF2 on the Sega CD. It was the perfect system for it.
It's so interesting to think that modern Sega Genesis releases Come with 80-megabit cartridges and above. If only we had cart sizes like this back in the day :P
Makes me wish that the sega cd didn’t have the extra hardware driving up the cost of the extra unit to attach. Maybe just get as much ram in there as possible or something without driving the price too high. Seemed to do wonders for the PC Engine.
@@IllegalPriest To be fair, when the developers built a game from the ground up for the Sega CD, you could definitely feel that power boost ^^
@Orzuum Sad but true. It seems FM audio wasn't the main line of expertise for a lot of western composers sadly.
@@st1ka sad only a few can utilize before sega ever did which is malibu, core and game arts.
@Benjamin Owuye Jagun I'm talking about sega cd games of Malibu. I agree with the gem sound engines on Malibu genesis port sounding terrible especially batman returns.