Forums

I finally played Street Fighter 2 on a emulator. And first of all I am impressed with the player sprites and how the game plays, but I was wondering could the programmers have done more, as far as the backgrounds and the music.

I know this is the Master System's largest cart, but could it be pushed even more. Like could they have done a 10 meg or 12 meg cart, or could there be more done on a 8 meg cart.

It just kills me how close they could of been with a great SMS game, if they would of had more detail in the background and a little better music.

But if this is all they could have done with no extra hardware, I am impressed. The character sprites look amazing and the way it plays amazing too.

Its just the sound and the backgrounds.

Oh also is there any thing better about the real SMS SF2 game compared to the emulated one?

I think the voice clips on this game would have taken up alot of space. I'm no expert on this stuff though..

I probably would have been cool with just the round, fight, you lose, you win and then take out voice for the names, when you choose a person on the select screen. Maybe that would of gave them more room.

Im not a Tech either, but alot of people said that more could have been done, to this game, its just that it came out so late, and in 97' alot of people didn't care about the Master System any more.

There are more limiting factors than just the cartridge space, though I'm sure they could have squeezed some more frames of animation (and some or all of the missing characters) with a larger cart.

One of the major limitations is Video RAM (VRAM) space -- on the SMS, all graphics must be loaded into Video RAM before they can be displayed by the video processor. The SMS has 16k of VRAM. Of that, around 2k is used for to hold various tables that make up the display, then the rest is used to define the little 8x8 pixel tiles, which are the building blocks of the display. These building blocks need to be shared amongst the player characters, power meter, letterforms for names and the countdown timer, other sprites (such as fireballs) and the background. There are therefore not nearly enough tiles to recreate the more elaborte backgrounds of the arcade version. Redundant backgrounds (i.e. repeating brick or wall patterns, or empty space) help spread out the available tiles so there can be enough to cover the screen. Large, detailed items, like the Japanese style house in Ryu's stage, such up far too much video ram. To put it in perspective, a single, 64x64 pixel detail, which at SMS resolutions would occupy 1/4 of the width and 1/3rd of the height of the screen, uses up 64 tiles which is about 15% of available video RAM. While some of these details can fit, others have to go and must be replaced by repeating patterns in order to make room for the rest.

In the case of the tiles that make up the the player characters, they can be swapped out with different tiles from frame to frame so you can display far more frames of animation that you could if everything had to fit in VRAM all at once. However, only a small amount of video data can be sent to VRAM in each frame, and between the two characters SF2 pretty much pushes it to the limit. Additional background animations like cheering crowds would not be possible unless all the animation frames can fit in VRAM, and as I mentioned above, space is already very tight there. Furthermore, there is a limitation to the number of sprites that the SMS can display on the screen at once , and the two character on the screen use up just about all of them as well, so there is little to spare for moving objects in the background.

Another limiting factor is the SMS's color palette -- the SMS can display 32 colors out of a total palette of 64. While 32 colors is a lot for an 8-bit platform, 64 colors is not a large palette to choose from, and the colors are fairly distinct from eachother so smooth shading is not possible. Games designed for the SMS generally use a brighter, more cartoon selection of colors to make of for the lack of shades in between, but for ports of arcade games with larger palettes to choose from, the degradation can be particularly noticable.

I don't exactly remember how the music is, I'm sure it could have been improved somewhat but there's not a lot you can do to make the SMS sound chip sound like anything but an SMS sound chip. The in-game voices are also limited to times when nothing on the screen is moving (Round One Fight! You Win! etc...) as the SMS effectively cannot modify the display or update game action while playing a sample, so it's less a problem of of cartridge space and more about CPU bandwidth.

So I'm not saying SF2 is a pinnacle of what the SMS can do, graphically, but I don't think it could have been taken much further. Better examples of what the SMS can do can be seen in games written just for the system. For example, I'd say Phantasy Star's 3D dungeons and full screen animated details surpass it on a technically and esthetically.

So Street Fighter 2 was pretty much the limit or atleast very close.

Im happy I got to read what Helio... said because it makes me feel sad for the Master System, how people bash this version of Street Fighter 2, when its not really that bad compared to other Master System games.

Really, I liked Street Fighter 2 on the SMS, because im used to the hardware and the way the soundchip sounds. To me its Street Fighter 2 8 bitized. and like the others said the player sprites look good, and to me more like 16 bit than 8 bit.

Shout, when Double Dragon came out for the SMS, I loved it, even though it wasn't close to the arcade as far as graphics and sound.

I don't know , Im just very familar with the hardware, and thats why I take some SMS games better than others, because I already have an idea of how it might look or sound. I know it beats the gameboy version and all them Nes hacks. but anyway-

I love the MASTER SYSTEM, it was my first console, and is still my favorite.

I wonder how Street Fighter 2 would have sounded with FM Sound

I think street fighter shows up the limitations of the sms. There are other games that push the system to its limits, but don't suffer any playability or graphical issue from doing it, like Outrun Europa, Lucky Dime Caper. Trying to fit the same street fighter that was on snes and megadrive onto sms was never going to work entirely, and its the gameplay that has suffered most in the conversion. The characters move way too fast, and have a lack of animation frames which just makes it worse, that makes game little more than just a button masher, you cant really employ much strategy or technique.

I think a better option would have been to redesign the game to make the most of the sms capabilities, I.e smaller sprites so the characters would mover more steadily and could have extra frames. Look at games like Pocket Fighter on Wonderswan or Match of the Millenium on Neo Geo Pocket to see what I mean.

As it is street fighter on sms is just a novelty, its interesting to have a go on, but not a version you'd really want to play instead of the megadrive release or whatever.

I'm not sure if the problems with SFII's gameplay are really technical in nature or not. I agree that, though it seems impressive at first, the gameplay has been extremely simplified and is not much fun to play compared to the original. It could have been much worse, though.

I should clarify that I think SFII was (in terms of graphic and technical achievement) is close to being as good as you could get for an SFII port, but I think better and more impressive games could be made design with the SMS's strengths and weaknesses in mind.

There are some examples of large sprite games on the SMS that get around the sprite limit by using background tiles to represent the larger sprites, such as Altered Beast and Golden Axe, but the trade offs are very slow frame rate and choppy movements (always in 8-pixel increments) which really affect the playability of the games, so while they look good in screenshots, they look (and play) poorly in motion. SFII uses more traditional sprites and I'm not crazy about the gameplay, I think it's more about a sloppy port than technical limitations.

If you "only" consider graphics / sound, I think that SFII and Sonic Blast (it has 8 mega too) are the ones that pushed the SMS to its limits. Although, we have some other masterpieces as the Phantasy Star "3D" dungeons, Donald Duck / Mickey Mouse games etc.

cheers

Bleh. Quality over quantity, please.

I agree with heliophobe. The main problem with SF2 is that the port was awfully done. And I absolutely think it does not pushes Master System to its limits.

Some games I think that pushes sms to limits are:
- Phantasy Star (3d dungeons and big worlds)
- Jurassic Park (great graphics and special effects, big and well animated sprites, scrolls in every direction)
- Monaco GP (2 players splitscreen with great sense of velocity)
- R-Type (although there are lots of slowdowns, it is full of sprites and gameplay is great)
- Aladdin (very good graphics and special effects)

We've had plenty of "pushing the system" discussions before - technically, Lemmings, Road Rash, Golden Axe (for its time), Space Harrier, and probably others I forgot, all push the system heavily in terms of graphics. Sound-wise there's not much to choose from, there's only so much you can do with the PSG while keeping a game running too (it might be interesting to judge how much percentage of the CPU some games spend in the sound code, but then again that might just indicate badly-written code). I'd cite The Flash as one game that manages to get some more interesting sounds out of it due to being a custom music engine and written by a chiptune guru. Any game where the frame rate drops is pushing the CPU hard, sadly there's quite a lot of those, even with rather poor games (eg. Cool Spot only runs at 20fps). On-cart hardware was very limited on the SMS, basically only the extra on-cart non-save RAM that was used in a few games (and not very good ones at that).

no thay did not push the sms to the limits they never used the expansion slot

As far as cart size goes...the logical limit was 256 pages of 16K = 4096K = 4 Megabytes = 32 Megabit = 4 times bigger than any cart that was ever released

Yes, but a new mapper could be invented for practically unlimited size.

The Street Fighter game that you speak of had some of the clearest voice clips in ANY 8-bit game.

Maxim wrote

We've had plenty of "pushing the system" discussions before - technically, Lemmings, Road Rash, Golden Axe (for its time), Space Harrier, and probably others I forgot, all push the system heavily in terms of graphics. Sound-wise there's not much to choose from, there's only so much you can do with the PSG while keeping a game running too (it might be interesting to judge how much percentage of the CPU some games spend in the sound code, but then again that might just indicate badly-written code). I'd cite The Flash as one game that manages to get some more interesting sounds out of it due to being a custom music engine and written by a chiptune guru. Any game where the frame rate drops is pushing the CPU hard, sadly there's quite a lot of those, even with rather poor games (eg. Cool Spot only runs at 20fps). On-cart hardware was very limited on the SMS, basically only the extra on-cart non-save RAM that was used in a few games (and not very good ones at that).

What about Gauntlet? It had a LOT of levels!

DJJones wrote

Shout, when Double Dragon came out for the SMS, I loved it, even though it wasn't close to the arcade as far as graphics and sound.

At least it got the level scheme DOWN, unlike the NES version. For Arcade-style sound, try the FM Chipset. I dunno about graphics.

SMSfanfr wrote

I probably would have been cool with just the round, fight, you lose, you win and then take out voice for the names, when you choose a person on the select screen. Maybe that would of gave them more room.

Im not a Tech either, but alot of people said that more could have been done, to this game, its just that it came out so late, and in 97' alot of people didn't care about the Master System any more.

Wiseduck wrote

I agree with heliophobe. The main problem with SF2 is that the port was awfully done. And I absolutely think it does not pushes Master System to its limits.

Some games I think that pushes sms to limits are:
- Phantasy Star (3d dungeons and big worlds)
- Jurassic Park (great graphics and special effects, big and well animated sprites, scrolls in every direction)
- Monaco GP (2 players splitscreen with great sense of velocity)
- R-Type (although there are lots of slowdowns, it is full of sprites and gameplay is great)
- Aladdin (very good graphics and special effects)

Yeah, if they took out all those unnessecary voices for character select, they could put in a level randomizer, like in the Genesis/SNES/Arcade versions, or maybe made it into a Special Champion Edition!

Besides the point, we still care about the Master System (hence this site), but I know it was obscure in my country, so I REALLY missed out-BIG TIME

Looking at the Master Systems version of Street Fighter II, I can say I was impressed, especially when you look at other 8 bit versions of this game. A great example is the commodore 64 version. I love the Commodore, but this is a great example of what NOT to do when releasing a game, especially when technically, the Commodore should be a more suitable system for Street Fighter II. The Master System version was an excellent port in the same way that Street Fighter Alpha 2 was for the SNES. They got the game running quite well for what it was and that is impressive on it's own. As for the Master System being pushed to it's limits? I think that it could have been pushed a bit harder and would have been if the US had given the system a chance. I know that sounds weird, but we have such a bigger user base and if the Master System was in the same position that the NES had been in here, I think it would have been a totally different, and much more interresting story in the end.

T2KFreeker wrote

Looking at the Master Systems version of Street Fighter II, I can say I was impressed, especially when you look at other 8 bit versions of this game. A great example is the commodore 64 version. I love the Commodore, but this is a great example of what NOT to do when releasing a game, especially when technically, the Commodore should be a more suitable system for Street Fighter II. The Master System version was an excellent port in the same way that Street Fighter Alpha 2 was for the SNES. They got the game running quite well for what it was and that is impressive on it's own. As for the Master System being pushed to it's limits? I think that it could have been pushed a bit harder and would have been if the US had given the system a chance. I know that sounds weird, but we have such a bigger user base and if the Master System was in the same position that the NES had been in here, I think it would have been a totally different, and much more interresting story in the end.

Now I really can't wait till they invent the time machine, so I can help SEGA of America with the Master System (not techically, I'm no technician, but I think it would have done a little better if they released the US/UK version with the FM Chipset). The way I'd help is to be a creative consultant, so they would have a better marketing advantage, and so I could give ideas for games (maybe a 2-player version of Golden Axe or a "reverse" Master Gear, with the GG Pallete built in). These are just a few of the ways I could be a creative consultant if I lived in the 80's or if I at least lived to witness the birth of time machine at age 18-25 .

I won't even try to explain the paradoxes involved there...

Maxim wrote

I won't even try to explain the paradoxes involved there...

I will!

Those are just a few to my knowledge.

aqua_hedgehog wrote

These are just a few of the ways I could be a creative consultant if I lived in the 80's

Drooling fanboy is more like it.

aqua_hedgehog wrote

T2KFreeker wrote

Looking at the Master Systems version of Street Fighter II, I can say I was impressed, especially when you look at other 8 bit versions of this game. A great example is the commodore 64 version. I love the Commodore, but this is a great example of what NOT to do when releasing a game, especially when technically, the Commodore should be a more suitable system for Street Fighter II. The Master System version was an excellent port in the same way that Street Fighter Alpha 2 was for the SNES. They got the game running quite well for what it was and that is impressive on it's own. As for the Master System being pushed to it's limits? I think that it could have been pushed a bit harder and would have been if the US had given the system a chance. I know that sounds weird, but we have such a bigger user base and if the Master System was in the same position that the NES had been in here, I think it would have been a totally different, and much more interresting story in the end.

Now I really can't wait till they invent the time machine, so I can help SEGA of America with the Master System (not techically, I'm no technician, but I think it would have done a little better if they released the US/UK version with the FM Chipset). The way I'd help is to be a creative consultant, so they would have a better marketing advantage, and so I could give ideas for games (maybe a 2-player version of Golden Axe or a "reverse" Master Gear, with the GG Pallete built in). These are just a few of the ways I could be a creative consultant if I lived in the 80's or if I at least lived to witness the birth of time machine at age 18-25 .

Look, to be honest, I loved the Master System. It is easily a way underated system. Truth be told though, you want the SMS to be successful in the US back then? Instead of making all of the action games they focused on, make some heavy duty sports titles and more RPG's in the vein of Phantasy Star. That right there would have helped quite a bit.

I disagree, if anything SEGAs titles were by far better in every way than any other console at the time.

My own understanding is that it was mostly the result of ineffective marketing and inhibitive pricing.

The only thing Ni****do did right was to get as many units out to the masses as humanly possible until the market was virtually saturated with their consoles.

The only thing Ni****do did was make all developers sign a contract whereby all games were automatically NES exclusives, thereby making developers release only on NES because they had the bigger market share; no competitor could ever get third party support. It was ruled illegal mid-way through the NES' life.

What do you think about those games to push SMS to his limits?

- Shadow Dancer (really big sprites and good palette, hasn't it?)

- Mortal Kombat 1/2 (realistic players digitized on a 8bit palette)

so the master system can handle cartridges with more than 4 megabyte?
this was new to me , so if the master system can handle games with 8 megabyte so much can be done , as ive got games with half of that and they have a lot of potential , with 8 megabyte or more maybe the master system could have awesome parallax scrolling (actual backgrounds , not tiles) like the mega drive and much more!
Maybe that wouldn't be a problem because backgrounds don't have any animation whatsoever , so man.... i think that maybe the master system is capable of showcasing a lot of great stuff that maybe hasn't been done yet that we haven't seen !
Maybe new developers can come up with something... :)

What's the maximum cartridge capability that the master system can take?

As for mortal kombat maybe that pushed the system , its a bit sluggish but its playable once you get used to it.
It's 4 megabit , maybe that was the limit at the time for most games they are all 4 max. With the memory that street fighter took , mortal kombat could have all the fighters , plus all the stages instead of just 2 and maybe also more stage fatalities.

Cartridge capacity isn't a limitation on effects, it is a limitation on content - amount of levels/graphics/characters/music/etc. The system speed and capabilities limit what you can do in the game.

There is no technical limit on capacity.

Whatever the ROM size, the SMS will always have just one background layer (Genesis has two) and an 8 sprite per scanline limit. So, as Maxim said, don't expect 'larger' games have additional features. But they can be richer, of course, in sense of content.

sverx wrote

Whatever the ROM size, the SMS will always have just one background layer (Genesis has two) and an 8 sprite per scanline limit.

yea but look shadow of the beast and james pond and a few others have parallax , how do you explain that?

Its' done by tile animation, an can only be done with backgrounds that have a very repetitive pattern (as the cave in Shadow of the Beast, and the CheckerBoard on Micromachines)

kusfo wrote

Its' done by tile animation, an can only be done with backgrounds that have a very repetitive pattern (as the cave in Shadow of the Beast, and the CheckerBoard on Micromachines)

thanks , that explains why all parallax have tiles then .

Kagesan's Bara Burū does that too between levels :)

So yea least i can say the master system has been pushed over the limits with parallax scrolling and so on.
Larger cartridges would mean more game content , which is cool that the master system can manage more than 4megabit .
There are no limits to imagination really , in the end its all up to the devs how to do things and if done right , they can work pretty well.

Filipe Santos wrote

Larger cartridges would mean more game content , which is cool that the master system can manage more than 4megabit .

someone minimally skilled in electronics easily can show us a cartridge using a 16bit (2 bytes) pager accessing 1gigabyte (8gigabit) rom - and what about accessing 64terabyte from a 32bit (4 bytes) pager? - in theory it is not impossible, and people skilled in electronics might want to share information here about how to do it - the fact is, just like those msx-konami games converted to master-system, it will use a “non-official” pager that most emulators wouldn’t support it for now

Imo even an 8megabit game would give loads of room to bring an awesome game and i say this because im not a fan of tec toy stuff and street fighter didnt impress me. The fighters aren't even touching the floor!
Mortal Kombat is half of that and it's way better even tho it's missing more than half of the stuff.
If most games would be 8megabit im sure a lot of great stuff wouldve been achieved and games would be probably twice as long and maybe with more content that the player wouldnt be able to finish it in a few hours .

Systems seem to be abandoned just as they peak technically.

The GG had a little more under the hood than the SMS but it's the best example of really squeezing everything out of hardware.

Even the Genesis, you look at how much one system evolved from early releases like Last Battle and later games like Vectorman.

I think there are a lot of great games in the SMS catalog that, even if didn't push the system to its theorical limits, were otherwise awesome. Some examples:

Big Sprites

Golden Axe

Shadow Dancer

Pleasant and Vivid Graphics & Colours

Fantasy Zone I (& II)

Sonic (Whole Saga)

Detailed Scenarios

Robocop Vs. Terminator

Lemmings

Ecco The Dolphin

Realistic Images

Pit Fighter

Golden Axe

Bubble Bobble

Paradigmatic 8-bit System Games

Astérix

Castle Of Illusion & Land Of Illusion & Legend Of Illusion

The Lucky Dime Caper

Absolutely Better Fighting Games Than Street Fighter II or Mortal Kombat

Masters Of Combat

Samgukji III

Jang Pung 3

Regarding this last game, the final boss of this 8-Mega jewel is the most absurd villain in history: a nazi lizard cyborg!

There is a common complain about SMS music about its quality, but I think the examples I put are awesome, even in PSG. What do you think?

I think they are all awesome specially Samgukji III i wasn't aware of such game , it looks brilliant!

I absolutely love the big sprites. If it wasn't for that 8-sprite-per-scanline-limit... with 64 8x16 sprites you can actually cover 1/6 of the whole screen!

Found this video of nes parallax and some are very impressive.
If you watch the video it has parallax with backgrounds , not all are tiles.
Some backgrounds even feature animation , megaman 6 has a really nice effect over the sunset and shatterhand and some others look great.
If the nes is capable of this , so is the master system for sure.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltuRuGM271Q

Sure the Master System can do that.
Those are raster effects, mainly, sometimes coupled with updating tiles and some palette animations too. If you code the game around these effects, it isn't really hard. You can even increase the effect by having some sprites placed in strategic places to give the idea of really having more layers one over the other.

You can do all this stuff easy on sms. See attached rom. That said, these techniques are quite inflexible and force you to tailor game play / level design / graphics etc. A lot of the time these things look great on you tube but suck to actually play.

I think the system was pushed pretty hard but in the wrong direction. Graphics at the expense of game play. I suspect it was due to western developers who came to the system with a more computer mindset.

With eastern developers on the nes you can see the evolution where gameplay and graphics were improved in tandem and not at the expense of each other. I think this is the direction where the SMS could be pushed well beyond the official library.

soneeek.zip (58.88 KB)

sverx wrote

Sure the Master System can do that.
Those are raster effects, mainly, sometimes coupled with updating tiles and some palette animations too. If you code the game around these effects, it isn't really hard. You can even increase the effect by having some sprites placed in strategic places to give the idea of really having more layers one over the other.

It sure would b cool to see new games featuring this type of stuff. Master system latter games didn't have this sort of stuff most are just one background and some members here were saying this stuff wasn't possible except for using tiles.
Most impressive games graphically for the master imo are probably Aladdin , James pond and shadow of the beast featuring parallax .
Maybe someone in the future will bother making a game with those sort of graphics. On that video some game has a background that looks like streets of rage , even has a sorta effect on the water. Streets of rage for the master didn't even had that :/. And it's sad knowing that the master system probably could've delivered that. Maybe even having 2 players on it which it didn't. But i suspect why sega didn't bother too much pushing hard the master system with parallax etc.
Two words.
Mega
Drive.

psidum wrote

You can do all this stuff easy on sms. See attached rom. That said, these techniques are quite inflexible and force you to tailor game play / level design / graphics etc. A lot of the time these things look great on you tube but suck to actually play.

I think the system was pushed pretty hard but in the wrong direction. Graphics at the expense of game play. I suspect it was due to western developers who came to the system with a more computer mindset.

With eastern developers on the nes you can see the evolution where gameplay and graphics were improved in tandem and not at the expense of each other. I think this is the direction where the SMS could be pushed well beyond the official library.

maybe someone in the future can dev/publish a game with all these nice features and btw your parallax demo is brilliant.

I never had a sms, but it seems to me like a msx2.5... shame that there were not companies like konami on msx nor sunsoft on nes. Companies with a strong sense of effectism, music importance and certain game formalism. For me, batman, journey to sylius gremlins2 or super speed hunter are pinnacles on 8 bit world. I have no doubt these games can be done on sms. Trouble is that nobody did them ( there are big titles, aleste, wonder boys, ys, gollvelius, but when i speak about msx2.5 i mean lost opportunities... snif)

I always assumed the main issue with parallax scrolling on the Master System was that you'd need to continually update the VRAM with new tiles, rather than having the NES method of just constantly shuffling through CHR-ROM pages.
It's much quicker to swap to a different bank every frame, than it is to try and push in and out tiles into the VRAM.

Of course, this doesn't exactly apply to most games that aren't attempting to put layers on top of each other, but rather just scrolling rawly horizontally.

Maybe I should let an actual expert correct me before my armchairiness becomes the death of me, however. Heh.

Seen some c64 shooter games recently that got lots of parallax , even turrican 2 over the ship part has background in parallax https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBdVV_BCZoA (over 49:24)

it's hard to believe that the master system can't do this unless the commodore 64 is more powerful .

Author	Message
Megsofpwr Guest	Was the Master System pushed to its limit? Posted: Thu Jun 21, 2007 11:19 pm
Megsofpwr Guest	I finally played Street Fighter 2 on a emulator. And first of all I am impressed with the player sprites and how the game plays, but I was wondering could the programmers have done more, as far as the backgrounds and the music. I know this is the Master System's largest cart, but could it be pushed even more. Like could they have done a 10 meg or 12 meg cart, or could there be more done on a 8 meg cart. It just kills me how close they could of been with a great SMS game, if they would of had more detail in the background and a little better music. But if this is all they could have done with no extra hardware, I am impressed. The character sprites look amazing and the way it plays amazing too. Its just the sound and the backgrounds. Oh also is there any thing better about the real SMS SF2 game compared to the emulated one?

james costello Joined: 17 Dec 2005 Posts: 537 Location: England	Posted: Fri Jun 22, 2007 12:02 am
	I think the voice clips on this game would have taken up alot of space. I'm no expert on this stuff though..

SMSfanfr Guest	Posted: Fri Jun 22, 2007 12:21 am
SMSfanfr Guest	I probably would have been cool with just the round, fight, you lose, you win and then take out voice for the names, when you choose a person on the select screen. Maybe that would of gave them more room. Im not a Tech either, but alot of people said that more could have been done, to this game, its just that it came out so late, and in 97' alot of people didn't care about the Master System any more.

Heliophobe Site Admin Joined: 25 Oct 1999 Posts: 2029 Location: Monterey, California	Posted: Fri Jun 22, 2007 1:01 am
	There are more limiting factors than just the cartridge space, though I'm sure they could have squeezed some more frames of animation (and some or all of the missing characters) with a larger cart. One of the major limitations is Video RAM (VRAM) space -- on the SMS, all graphics must be loaded into Video RAM before they can be displayed by the video processor. The SMS has 16k of VRAM. Of that, around 2k is used for to hold various tables that make up the display, then the rest is used to define the little 8x8 pixel tiles, which are the building blocks of the display. These building blocks need to be shared amongst the player characters, power meter, letterforms for names and the countdown timer, other sprites (such as fireballs) and the background. There are therefore not nearly enough tiles to recreate the more elaborte backgrounds of the arcade version. Redundant backgrounds (i.e. repeating brick or wall patterns, or empty space) help spread out the available tiles so there can be enough to cover the screen. Large, detailed items, like the Japanese style house in Ryu's stage, such up far too much video ram. To put it in perspective, a single, 64x64 pixel detail, which at SMS resolutions would occupy 1/4 of the width and 1/3rd of the height of the screen, uses up 64 tiles which is about 15% of available video RAM. While some of these details can fit, others have to go and must be replaced by repeating patterns in order to make room for the rest. In the case of the tiles that make up the the player characters, they can be swapped out with different tiles from frame to frame so you can display far more frames of animation that you could if everything had to fit in VRAM all at once. However, only a small amount of video data can be sent to VRAM in each frame, and between the two characters SF2 pretty much pushes it to the limit. Additional background animations like cheering crowds would not be possible unless all the animation frames can fit in VRAM, and as I mentioned above, space is already very tight there. Furthermore, there is a limitation to the number of sprites that the SMS can display on the screen at once , and the two character on the screen use up just about all of them as well, so there is little to spare for moving objects in the background. Another limiting factor is the SMS's color palette -- the SMS can display 32 colors out of a total palette of 64. While 32 colors is a lot for an 8-bit platform, 64 colors is not a large palette to choose from, and the colors are fairly distinct from eachother so smooth shading is not possible. Games designed for the SMS generally use a brighter, more cartoon selection of colors to make of for the lack of shades in between, but for ports of arcade games with larger palettes to choose from, the degradation can be particularly noticable. I don't exactly remember how the music is, I'm sure it could have been improved somewhat but there's not a lot you can do to make the SMS sound chip sound like anything but an SMS sound chip. The in-game voices are also limited to times when nothing on the screen is moving (Round One Fight! You Win! etc...) as the SMS effectively cannot modify the display or update game action while playing a sample, so it's less a problem of of cartridge space and more about CPU bandwidth. So I'm not saying SF2 is a pinnacle of what the SMS can do, graphically, but I don't think it could have been taken much further. Better examples of what the SMS can do can be seen in games written just for the system. For example, I'd say Phantasy Star's 3D dungeons and full screen animated details surpass it on a technically and esthetically.

DJJones Joined: 15 Jun 2007 Posts: 21 Location: North Carolina, US	Posted: Fri Jun 22, 2007 2:46 am
	So Street Fighter 2 was pretty much the limit or atleast very close. Im happy I got to read what Helio... said because it makes me feel sad for the Master System, how people bash this version of Street Fighter 2, when its not really that bad compared to other Master System games. Really, I liked Street Fighter 2 on the SMS, because im used to the hardware and the way the soundchip sounds. To me its Street Fighter 2 8 bitized. and like the others said the player sprites look good, and to me more like 16 bit than 8 bit. Shout, when Double Dragon came out for the SMS, I loved it, even though it wasn't close to the arcade as far as graphics and sound. I don't know , Im just very familar with the hardware, and thats why I take some SMS games better than others, because I already have an idea of how it might look or sound. I know it beats the gameboy version and all them Nes hacks. but anyway- I love the MASTER SYSTEM, it was my first console, and is still my favorite.

DJJones Joined: 15 Jun 2007 Posts: 21 Location: North Carolina, US	Posted: Fri Jun 22, 2007 1:59 pm
	I wonder how Street Fighter 2 would have sounded with FM Sound

playgeneration Joined: 12 Feb 2006 Posts: 194 Location: Wales	Posted: Fri Jun 22, 2007 8:43 pm
	I think street fighter shows up the limitations of the sms. There are other games that push the system to its limits, but don't suffer any playability or graphical issue from doing it, like Outrun Europa, Lucky Dime Caper. Trying to fit the same street fighter that was on snes and megadrive onto sms was never going to work entirely, and its the gameplay that has suffered most in the conversion. The characters move way too fast, and have a lack of animation frames which just makes it worse, that makes game little more than just a button masher, you cant really employ much strategy or technique. I think a better option would have been to redesign the game to make the most of the sms capabilities, I.e smaller sprites so the characters would mover more steadily and could have extra frames. Look at games like Pocket Fighter on Wonderswan or Match of the Millenium on Neo Geo Pocket to see what I mean. As it is street fighter on sms is just a novelty, its interesting to have a go on, but not a version you'd really want to play instead of the megadrive release or whatever.

Heliophobe Site Admin Joined: 25 Oct 1999 Posts: 2029 Location: Monterey, California	Posted: Fri Jun 22, 2007 9:25 pm
	I'm not sure if the problems with SFII's gameplay are really technical in nature or not. I agree that, though it seems impressive at first, the gameplay has been extremely simplified and is not much fun to play compared to the original. It could have been much worse, though. I should clarify that I think SFII was (in terms of graphic and technical achievement) is close to being as good as you could get for an SFII port, but I think better and more impressive games could be made design with the SMS's strengths and weaknesses in mind. There are some examples of large sprite games on the SMS that get around the sprite limit by using background tiles to represent the larger sprites, such as Altered Beast and Golden Axe, but the trade offs are very slow frame rate and choppy movements (always in 8-pixel increments) which really affect the playability of the games, so while they look good in screenshots, they look (and play) poorly in motion. SFII uses more traditional sprites and I'm not crazy about the gameplay, I think it's more about a sloppy port than technical limitations.

darini Joined: 29 Jul 2005 Posts: 141	Posted: Sun Jun 24, 2007 2:33 pm
darini Joined: 29 Jul 2005 Posts: 141	If you "only" consider graphics / sound, I think that SFII and Sonic Blast (it has 8 mega too) are the ones that pushed the SMS to its limits. Although, we have some other masterpieces as the Phantasy Star "3D" dungeons, Donald Duck / Mickey Mouse games etc. cheers

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14728 Location: London	Posted: Sun Jun 24, 2007 6:09 pm
	Bleh. Quality over quantity, please.

Wiseduck Joined: 21 Dec 2004 Posts: 66 Location: Belo Horizonte, Brazil	Posted: Tue Jun 26, 2007 3:03 am
	I agree with heliophobe. The main problem with SF2 is that the port was awfully done. And I absolutely think it does not pushes Master System to its limits. Some games I think that pushes sms to limits are: - Phantasy Star (3d dungeons and big worlds) - Jurassic Park (great graphics and special effects, big and well animated sprites, scrolls in every direction) - Monaco GP (2 players splitscreen with great sense of velocity) - R-Type (although there are lots of slowdowns, it is full of sprites and gameplay is great) - Aladdin (very good graphics and special effects)

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14728 Location: London	Posted: Tue Jun 26, 2007 7:01 am
	We've had plenty of "pushing the system" discussions before - technically, Lemmings, Road Rash, Golden Axe (for its time), Space Harrier, and probably others I forgot, all push the system heavily in terms of graphics. Sound-wise there's not much to choose from, there's only so much you can do with the PSG while keeping a game running too (it might be interesting to judge how much percentage of the CPU some games spend in the sound code, but then again that might just indicate badly-written code). I'd cite The Flash as one game that manages to get some more interesting sounds out of it due to being a custom music engine and written by a chiptune guru. Any game where the frame rate drops is pushing the CPU hard, sadly there's quite a lot of those, even with rather poor games (eg. Cool Spot only runs at 20fps). On-cart hardware was very limited on the SMS, basically only the extra on-cart non-save RAM that was used in a few games (and not very good ones at that).

twr198 Joined: 22 Aug 2007 Posts: 4	no Posted: Wed Aug 22, 2007 10:01 pm
twr198 Joined: 22 Aug 2007 Posts: 4	no thay did not push the sms to the limits they never used the expansion slot

MadMikeAU Joined: 21 Nov 2005 Posts: 150 Location: Sydney, NSW, Australia	Posted: Sat Aug 25, 2007 5:50 am
	As far as cart size goes...the logical limit was 256 pages of 16K = 4096K = 4 Megabytes = 32 Megabit = 4 times bigger than any cart that was ever released

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14728 Location: London	Posted: Sat Aug 25, 2007 2:25 pm
	Yes, but a new mapper could be invented for practically unlimited size.

aqua_hedgehog Joined: 17 Apr 2007 Posts: 120 Location: Anchorage, Alaska	Posted: Sun Sep 02, 2007 2:49 am
	The Street Fighter game that you speak of had some of the clearest voice clips in ANY 8-bit game.

aqua_hedgehog Joined: 17 Apr 2007 Posts: 120 Location: Anchorage, Alaska	Posted: Sun Sep 02, 2007 2:51 am
	Maxim wrote We've had plenty of "pushing the system" discussions before - technically, Lemmings, Road Rash, Golden Axe (for its time), Space Harrier, and probably others I forgot, all push the system heavily in terms of graphics. Sound-wise there's not much to choose from, there's only so much you can do with the PSG while keeping a game running too (it might be interesting to judge how much percentage of the CPU some games spend in the sound code, but then again that might just indicate badly-written code). I'd cite The Flash as one game that manages to get some more interesting sounds out of it due to being a custom music engine and written by a chiptune guru. Any game where the frame rate drops is pushing the CPU hard, sadly there's quite a lot of those, even with rather poor games (eg. Cool Spot only runs at 20fps). On-cart hardware was very limited on the SMS, basically only the extra on-cart non-save RAM that was used in a few games (and not very good ones at that). What about Gauntlet? It had a LOT of levels!

aqua_hedgehog Joined: 17 Apr 2007 Posts: 120 Location: Anchorage, Alaska	Posted: Sun Sep 02, 2007 8:49 pm
	DJJones wrote Shout, when Double Dragon came out for the SMS, I loved it, even though it wasn't close to the arcade as far as graphics and sound. At least it got the level scheme DOWN, unlike the NES version. For Arcade-style sound, try the FM Chipset. I dunno about graphics.

aqua_hedgehog Joined: 17 Apr 2007 Posts: 120 Location: Anchorage, Alaska	Posted: Thu Sep 13, 2007 10:57 pm Last edited by aqua_hedgehog on Fri Sep 14, 2007 4:04 am; edited 1 time in total
	SMSfanfr wrote I probably would have been cool with just the round, fight, you lose, you win and then take out voice for the names, when you choose a person on the select screen. Maybe that would of gave them more room. Im not a Tech either, but alot of people said that more could have been done, to this game, its just that it came out so late, and in 97' alot of people didn't care about the Master System any more. Wiseduck wrote I agree with heliophobe. The main problem with SF2 is that the port was awfully done. And I absolutely think it does not pushes Master System to its limits. Some games I think that pushes sms to limits are: - Phantasy Star (3d dungeons and big worlds) - Jurassic Park (great graphics and special effects, big and well animated sprites, scrolls in every direction) - Monaco GP (2 players splitscreen with great sense of velocity) - R-Type (although there are lots of slowdowns, it is full of sprites and gameplay is great) - Aladdin (very good graphics and special effects) Yeah, if they took out all those unnessecary voices for character select, they could put in a level randomizer, like in the Genesis/SNES/Arcade versions, or maybe made it into a Special Champion Edition! Besides the point, we still care about the Master System (hence this site), but I know it was obscure in my country, so I REALLY missed out-BIG TIME

T2KFreeker Joined: 06 Sep 2007 Posts: 18 Location: Southern California	Posted: Fri Sep 14, 2007 3:34 am
	Looking at the Master Systems version of Street Fighter II, I can say I was impressed, especially when you look at other 8 bit versions of this game. A great example is the commodore 64 version. I love the Commodore, but this is a great example of what NOT to do when releasing a game, especially when technically, the Commodore should be a more suitable system for Street Fighter II. The Master System version was an excellent port in the same way that Street Fighter Alpha 2 was for the SNES. They got the game running quite well for what it was and that is impressive on it's own. As for the Master System being pushed to it's limits? I think that it could have been pushed a bit harder and would have been if the US had given the system a chance. I know that sounds weird, but we have such a bigger user base and if the Master System was in the same position that the NES had been in here, I think it would have been a totally different, and much more interresting story in the end.

aqua_hedgehog Joined: 17 Apr 2007 Posts: 120 Location: Anchorage, Alaska	Posted: Fri Sep 14, 2007 4:10 am
	T2KFreeker wrote Looking at the Master Systems version of Street Fighter II, I can say I was impressed, especially when you look at other 8 bit versions of this game. A great example is the commodore 64 version. I love the Commodore, but this is a great example of what NOT to do when releasing a game, especially when technically, the Commodore should be a more suitable system for Street Fighter II. The Master System version was an excellent port in the same way that Street Fighter Alpha 2 was for the SNES. They got the game running quite well for what it was and that is impressive on it's own. As for the Master System being pushed to it's limits? I think that it could have been pushed a bit harder and would have been if the US had given the system a chance. I know that sounds weird, but we have such a bigger user base and if the Master System was in the same position that the NES had been in here, I think it would have been a totally different, and much more interresting story in the end. Now I really can't wait till they invent the time machine, so I can help SEGA of America with the Master System (not techically, I'm no technician, but I think it would have done a little better if they released the US/UK version with the FM Chipset). The way I'd help is to be a creative consultant, so they would have a better marketing advantage, and so I could give ideas for games (maybe a 2-player version of Golden Axe or a "reverse" Master Gear, with the GG Pallete built in). These are just a few of the ways I could be a creative consultant if I lived in the 80's or if I at least lived to witness the birth of time machine at age 18-25 .

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14728 Location: London	Posted: Fri Sep 14, 2007 8:05 am
	I won't even try to explain the paradoxes involved there...

aqua_hedgehog Joined: 17 Apr 2007 Posts: 120 Location: Anchorage, Alaska	Posted: Fri Sep 14, 2007 8:16 pm Last edited by aqua_hedgehog on Sat Sep 15, 2007 3:27 am; edited 2 times in total
	Maxim wrote I won't even try to explain the paradoxes involved there... I will! SEGA will continue with their consoles while Ni**do gives up after the N64. Al Gore will be voted for president in place of George Bush. People will look to SEGA to synthetically engineer actual Chaos Emeralds for military use, rather than Ni**do genetically engineering Pokemon or Marios. Osama Bin Laden will take the form of Mario. All the computer nerds will be the ones getting girlfriends, not those lowlife jocks Those are just a few to my knowledge.

idrougge Joined: 01 Jan 2005 Posts: 360 Location: Stockholm, Sweden	Posted: Fri Sep 14, 2007 9:27 pm
	aqua_hedgehog wrote These are just a few of the ways I could be a creative consultant if I lived in the 80's Drooling fanboy is more like it.

T2KFreeker Joined: 06 Sep 2007 Posts: 18 Location: Southern California	Posted: Sat Sep 15, 2007 4:08 am
	aqua_hedgehog wrote T2KFreeker wrote Looking at the Master Systems version of Street Fighter II, I can say I was impressed, especially when you look at other 8 bit versions of this game. A great example is the commodore 64 version. I love the Commodore, but this is a great example of what NOT to do when releasing a game, especially when technically, the Commodore should be a more suitable system for Street Fighter II. The Master System version was an excellent port in the same way that Street Fighter Alpha 2 was for the SNES. They got the game running quite well for what it was and that is impressive on it's own. As for the Master System being pushed to it's limits? I think that it could have been pushed a bit harder and would have been if the US had given the system a chance. I know that sounds weird, but we have such a bigger user base and if the Master System was in the same position that the NES had been in here, I think it would have been a totally different, and much more interresting story in the end. Now I really can't wait till they invent the time machine, so I can help SEGA of America with the Master System (not techically, I'm no technician, but I think it would have done a little better if they released the US/UK version with the FM Chipset). The way I'd help is to be a creative consultant, so they would have a better marketing advantage, and so I could give ideas for games (maybe a 2-player version of Golden Axe or a "reverse" Master Gear, with the GG Pallete built in). These are just a few of the ways I could be a creative consultant if I lived in the 80's or if I at least lived to witness the birth of time machine at age 18-25 . Look, to be honest, I loved the Master System. It is easily a way underated system. Truth be told though, you want the SMS to be successful in the US back then? Instead of making all of the action games they focused on, make some heavy duty sports titles and more RPG's in the vein of Phantasy Star. That right there would have helped quite a bit.

thatawesomeguy Joined: 25 Jul 2007 Posts: 729 Location: Melbourne, Australia	Posted: Sat Sep 15, 2007 3:49 pm
	I disagree, if anything SEGAs titles were by far better in every way than any other console at the time. My own understanding is that it was mostly the result of ineffective marketing and inhibitive pricing. The only thing Ni****do did right was to get as many units out to the masses as humanly possible until the market was virtually saturated with their consoles.

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14728 Location: London	Posted: Sat Sep 15, 2007 8:44 pm
	The only thing Ni****do did was make all developers sign a contract whereby all games were automatically NES exclusives, thereby making developers release only on NES because they had the bigger market share; no competitor could ever get third party support. It was ruled illegal mid-way through the NES' life.

Simon82 Joined: 08 Mar 2007 Posts: 92	Posted: Thu Oct 25, 2007 6:27 am
Simon82 Joined: 08 Mar 2007 Posts: 92	What do you think about those games to push SMS to his limits? - Shadow Dancer (really big sprites and good palette, hasn't it?) - Mortal Kombat 1/2 (realistic players digitized on a 8bit palette)

Filipe Santos Joined: 27 Feb 2017 Posts: 145 Location: Northern Ireland	Posted: Thu Mar 23, 2017 12:49 am
	so the master system can handle cartridges with more than 4 megabyte? this was new to me , so if the master system can handle games with 8 megabyte so much can be done , as ive got games with half of that and they have a lot of potential , with 8 megabyte or more maybe the master system could have awesome parallax scrolling (actual backgrounds , not tiles) like the mega drive and much more! Maybe that wouldn't be a problem because backgrounds don't have any animation whatsoever , so man.... i think that maybe the master system is capable of showcasing a lot of great stuff that maybe hasn't been done yet that we haven't seen ! Maybe new developers can come up with something... :) What's the maximum cartridge capability that the master system can take? As for mortal kombat maybe that pushed the system , its a bit sluggish but its playable once you get used to it. It's 4 megabit , maybe that was the limit at the time for most games they are all 4 max. With the memory that street fighter took , mortal kombat could have all the fighters , plus all the stages instead of just 2 and maybe also more stage fatalities.

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14728 Location: London	Posted: Thu Mar 23, 2017 8:22 am
	Cartridge capacity isn't a limitation on effects, it is a limitation on content - amount of levels/graphics/characters/music/etc. The system speed and capabilities limit what you can do in the game. There is no technical limit on capacity.

sverx Joined: 05 Sep 2013 Posts: 3805 Location: Stockholm, Sweden	Posted: Thu Mar 23, 2017 9:24 am
	Whatever the ROM size, the SMS will always have just one background layer (Genesis has two) and an 8 sprite per scanline limit. So, as Maxim said, don't expect 'larger' games have additional features. But they can be richer, of course, in sense of content.

Filipe Santos Joined: 27 Feb 2017 Posts: 145 Location: Northern Ireland	Posted: Thu Mar 23, 2017 2:08 pm
	sverx wrote Whatever the ROM size, the SMS will always have just one background layer (Genesis has two) and an 8 sprite per scanline limit. yea but look shadow of the beast and james pond and a few others have parallax , how do you explain that?

kusfo Joined: 29 Mar 2012 Posts: 882 Location: Spain	Posted: Thu Mar 23, 2017 2:37 pm
kusfo Joined: 29 Mar 2012 Posts: 882 Location: Spain	Its' done by tile animation, an can only be done with backgrounds that have a very repetitive pattern (as the cave in Shadow of the Beast, and the CheckerBoard on Micromachines)

Filipe Santos Joined: 27 Feb 2017 Posts: 145 Location: Northern Ireland	Posted: Thu Mar 23, 2017 3:04 pm
	kusfo wrote Its' done by tile animation, an can only be done with backgrounds that have a very repetitive pattern (as the cave in Shadow of the Beast, and the CheckerBoard on Micromachines) thanks , that explains why all parallax have tiles then .

sverx Joined: 05 Sep 2013 Posts: 3805 Location: Stockholm, Sweden	Posted: Thu Mar 23, 2017 3:36 pm
	Kagesan's Bara Burū does that too between levels :)

Filipe Santos Joined: 27 Feb 2017 Posts: 145 Location: Northern Ireland	Posted: Thu Mar 23, 2017 5:49 pm
	So yea least i can say the master system has been pushed over the limits with parallax scrolling and so on. Larger cartridges would mean more game content , which is cool that the master system can manage more than 4megabit . There are no limits to imagination really , in the end its all up to the devs how to do things and if done right , they can work pretty well.

nitrofurano Joined: 01 Aug 2012 Posts: 322 Location: Porto, Portugal	Posted: Thu Mar 23, 2017 9:53 pm
	Filipe Santos wrote Larger cartridges would mean more game content , which is cool that the master system can manage more than 4megabit . someone minimally skilled in electronics easily can show us a cartridge using a 16bit (2 bytes) pager accessing 1gigabyte (8gigabit) rom - and what about accessing 64terabyte from a 32bit (4 bytes) pager? - in theory it is not impossible, and people skilled in electronics might want to share information here about how to do it - the fact is, just like those msx-konami games converted to master-system, it will use a “non-official” pager that most emulators wouldn’t support it for now

Filipe Santos Joined: 27 Feb 2017 Posts: 145 Location: Northern Ireland	Posted: Thu Mar 23, 2017 10:06 pm
	Imo even an 8megabit game would give loads of room to bring an awesome game and i say this because im not a fan of tec toy stuff and street fighter didnt impress me. The fighters aren't even touching the floor! Mortal Kombat is half of that and it's way better even tho it's missing more than half of the stuff. If most games would be 8megabit im sure a lot of great stuff wouldve been achieved and games would be probably twice as long and maybe with more content that the player wouldnt be able to finish it in a few hours .

8bitbill Joined: 19 Mar 2017 Posts: 10	Posted: Fri Mar 24, 2017 7:56 am
8bitbill Joined: 19 Mar 2017 Posts: 10	Systems seem to be abandoned just as they peak technically. The GG had a little more under the hood than the SMS but it's the best example of really squeezing everything out of hardware. Even the Genesis, you look at how much one system evolved from early releases like Last Battle and later games like Vectorman.

Ron_Stard Joined: 01 Apr 2008 Posts: 197 Location: Spain	Posted: Fri Mar 24, 2017 10:58 am
Ron_Stard Joined: 01 Apr 2008 Posts: 197 Location: Spain	I think there are a lot of great games in the SMS catalog that, even if didn't push the system to its theorical limits, were otherwise awesome. Some examples: Big Sprites Golden Axe Shadow Dancer Pleasant and Vivid Graphics & Colours Fantasy Zone I (& II) Sonic (Whole Saga) Detailed Scenarios Robocop Vs. Terminator Lemmings Ecco The Dolphin Realistic Images Pit Fighter Golden Axe Music (Even On PSG!!) Ecco The Dolphin http://www.smspower.org/Music/EccoTheDolphin-GG Pit-Fighter The Cyber Shinobi (Title screen) Lemmings http://www.smspower.org/Music/Lemmings-SMS Parlour Games http://www.smspower.org/Music/ParlourGames-SMS-PSG Robocop Vs. Terminator http://www.smspower.org/Music/RoboCopVersusTheTerminator-GG Streets Of Rage II http://www.smspower.org/Music/StreetsOfRageII-GG Sonic Saga http://www.smspower.org/Music/SonicTheHedgehog-SMS http://www.smspower.org/Music/SonicTheHedgehog2-GG http://www.smspower.org/Music/SonicChaos-SMS Arcade Conversions Operation Wolf Bubble Bobble Paradigmatic 8-bit System Games Astérix Castle Of Illusion & Land Of Illusion & Legend Of Illusion The Lucky Dime Caper Absolutely Better Fighting Games Than Street Fighter II or Mortal Kombat Masters Of Combat Samgukji III Jang Pung 3 Regarding this last game, the final boss of this 8-Mega jewel is the most absurd villain in history: a nazi lizard cyborg! There is a common complain about SMS music about its quality, but I think the examples I put are awesome, even in PSG. What do you think?

Filipe Santos Joined: 27 Feb 2017 Posts: 145 Location: Northern Ireland	Posted: Fri Mar 24, 2017 11:42 am
	I think they are all awesome specially Samgukji III i wasn't aware of such game , it looks brilliant!

sverx Joined: 05 Sep 2013 Posts: 3805 Location: Stockholm, Sweden	Posted: Fri Mar 24, 2017 12:57 pm
	I absolutely love the big sprites. If it wasn't for that 8-sprite-per-scanline-limit... with 64 8x16 sprites you can actually cover 1/6 of the whole screen!

Filipe Santos Joined: 27 Feb 2017 Posts: 145 Location: Northern Ireland	Posted: Mon Mar 27, 2017 1:24 pm
	Found this video of nes parallax and some are very impressive. If you watch the video it has parallax with backgrounds , not all are tiles. Some backgrounds even feature animation , megaman 6 has a really nice effect over the sunset and shatterhand and some others look great. If the nes is capable of this , so is the master system for sure. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltuRuGM271Q

sverx Joined: 05 Sep 2013 Posts: 3805 Location: Stockholm, Sweden	Posted: Mon Mar 27, 2017 2:07 pm
	Sure the Master System can do that. Those are raster effects, mainly, sometimes coupled with updating tiles and some palette animations too. If you code the game around these effects, it isn't really hard. You can even increase the effect by having some sprites placed in strategic places to give the idea of really having more layers one over the other.

psidum Joined: 01 Jan 2014 Posts: 331	Posted: Mon Mar 27, 2017 3:31 pm
psidum Joined: 01 Jan 2014 Posts: 331	You can do all this stuff easy on sms. See attached rom. That said, these techniques are quite inflexible and force you to tailor game play / level design / graphics etc. A lot of the time these things look great on you tube but suck to actually play. I think the system was pushed pretty hard but in the wrong direction. Graphics at the expense of game play. I suspect it was due to western developers who came to the system with a more computer mindset. With eastern developers on the nes you can see the evolution where gameplay and graphics were improved in tandem and not at the expense of each other. I think this is the direction where the SMS could be pushed well beyond the official library. soneeek.zip (58.88 KB)

Filipe Santos Joined: 27 Feb 2017 Posts: 145 Location: Northern Ireland	Posted: Mon Mar 27, 2017 4:15 pm Last edited by Filipe Santos on Mon Mar 27, 2017 5:43 pm; edited 2 times in total
	sverx wrote Sure the Master System can do that. Those are raster effects, mainly, sometimes coupled with updating tiles and some palette animations too. If you code the game around these effects, it isn't really hard. You can even increase the effect by having some sprites placed in strategic places to give the idea of really having more layers one over the other. It sure would b cool to see new games featuring this type of stuff. Master system latter games didn't have this sort of stuff most are just one background and some members here were saying this stuff wasn't possible except for using tiles. Most impressive games graphically for the master imo are probably Aladdin , James pond and shadow of the beast featuring parallax . Maybe someone in the future will bother making a game with those sort of graphics. On that video some game has a background that looks like streets of rage , even has a sorta effect on the water. Streets of rage for the master didn't even had that :/. And it's sad knowing that the master system probably could've delivered that. Maybe even having 2 players on it which it didn't. But i suspect why sega didn't bother too much pushing hard the master system with parallax etc. Two words. Mega Drive.

Filipe Santos Joined: 27 Feb 2017 Posts: 145 Location: Northern Ireland	Posted: Mon Mar 27, 2017 5:15 pm
	psidum wrote You can do all this stuff easy on sms. See attached rom. That said, these techniques are quite inflexible and force you to tailor game play / level design / graphics etc. A lot of the time these things look great on you tube but suck to actually play. I think the system was pushed pretty hard but in the wrong direction. Graphics at the expense of game play. I suspect it was due to western developers who came to the system with a more computer mindset. With eastern developers on the nes you can see the evolution where gameplay and graphics were improved in tandem and not at the expense of each other. I think this is the direction where the SMS could be pushed well beyond the official library. maybe someone in the future can dev/publish a game with all these nice features and btw your parallax demo is brilliant.

eruiz00 Joined: 28 Jan 2017 Posts: 556 Location: Málaga, Spain	Posted: Mon Mar 27, 2017 6:57 pm
	I never had a sms, but it seems to me like a msx2.5... shame that there were not companies like konami on msx nor sunsoft on nes. Companies with a strong sense of effectism, music importance and certain game formalism. For me, batman, journey to sylius gremlins2 or super speed hunter are pinnacles on 8 bit world. I have no doubt these games can be done on sms. Trouble is that nobody did them ( there are big titles, aleste, wonder boys, ys, gollvelius, but when i speak about msx2.5 i mean lost opportunities... snif)

Flygon Joined: 30 Jun 2016 Posts: 196 Location: Melbourne, Australia	Posted: Tue Mar 28, 2017 3:27 am
	I always assumed the main issue with parallax scrolling on the Master System was that you'd need to continually update the VRAM with new tiles, rather than having the NES method of just constantly shuffling through CHR-ROM pages. It's much quicker to swap to a different bank every frame, than it is to try and push in and out tiles into the VRAM. Of course, this doesn't exactly apply to most games that aren't attempting to put layers on top of each other, but rather just scrolling rawly horizontally. Maybe I should let an actual expert correct me before my armchairiness becomes the death of me, however. Heh.

Filipe Santos Joined: 27 Feb 2017 Posts: 145 Location: Northern Ireland	Posted: Thu Apr 06, 2017 5:24 pm
	Seen some c64 shooter games recently that got lots of parallax , even turrican 2 over the ship part has background in parallax https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBdVV_BCZoA (over 49:24) it's hard to believe that the master system can't do this unless the commodore 64 is more powerful .

Forums

View topic - Was the Master System pushed to its limit?