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As promised yesterday, two long awaited releases and a special thanks to friend of the people NonShinyGoose for helping on those.

Power Drive for the Game Gear. Released in Europe in 1994, Power Drive is a top down rally-ish racing game with charming little cars and steep controls that at every turn will forcefully remind you about the concept of momentum.

The Game Gear version is a particularly rare item and it went under our radar for a long amount of time. Working on creating games entries for the site recently made me realize that I knew nothing about that game, and the internet also had zero information or screenshots about it. This gap is now filled and we have dump of the game as well as a stock of obligatory screenshots to feed the network.

It bear a very "Amiga 1994" look, from pre-rendered 3D sprites (probably an exciting thing to technology addicts at the time) down to cheesy colored gradient fonts and a nice animation touch with the race-start countdown effect using line animation. It looks like it could have been a great game if only the controls weren't so awkward (edit: and the fonts color changed). The game uses a lots of flickering tricks taking advantage of LCD persistence from the Game Gear screen, which leads to visible flickering in most emulators. Do we have an emulator simulating the Game Gear LCD screen already?

Next we have Jungle Strike for the Game Gear. Sitting between Desert Strike and Urban Strike, the second episode of popular "strike" serie, leading you to South America to fight semi-imaginary drug lords. Although not on par with the 16-bit releases, it is a complete and polished product featuring a mix of action and exploration-strategy.

Finally we've got a nifty Ax Battler - A Legend of Golden Axe Prototype for the Game Gear. Based on the Golden Axe universe, this 1991 Action-RPG hybrid release is one of the game defining the early Game Gear era. It's pretty classic in contents but benefits from a competent execution for its time in the Game Gear cycle.

With 14 releases, it looks like we've done pretty good this week! :)

This message will auto destruct itself someday.

power_drive-gg.zip (275.93 KB)

jungle_strike-gg.zip (247.88 KB)

ax_battler-proto-gg.zip (140.74 KB)

Bock wrote

Do we have an emulator simulating the Game Gear LCD screen already?

It might be better to use Kega Fusion rather than Meka.

English Invader wrote

Bock wrote

Do we have an emulator simulating the Game Gear LCD screen already?

It might be better to use Kega Fusion rather than Meka.

As far as I know there is no render plugin for Kega doing that either. It should be easy to develop one though.
The best example is Super Monaco GP 2 menus which alternate colors fast in a way that it looks awful with emulators.

I really like Power Drive. Shame not many people got to play it - it's the type of game that shows off what the GameGear could do when tickled in the right places.

Thanks for the Power Drive rom. This is another game I was waiting a long time.

Power Drive game is very well done, but the cars are impossible to control (skid a lot) and this affects the gameplay.

One pretty good way to play Power Drive with LCD persistence is to... play it on a slow LCD :) It looks pretty good on S8DS and ApprenticeMinusDS, although I think the DS screen tends to darker colours and it looks like the game's expecting the opposite?

Overall I'm finding it quite tough, but reasonably realistic. The music seems really odd, though.

Hint for the Sweden skills test: stop on the STOP marker and wait for the GO. Reverse into the parking space (D/U while stopped to select direction) and wait for the GO again. For the spiral thing, you've done it right when the cones disappear. Stop on the EXIT marker to finish.

90 minutes into the game and my savestate got corrupted :(

Notice that the language select screen shows a Brazilian map/flag for the Portuguese setting. Being a late development, maybe they had that market more in mind?

The ROM contains this text:

Quote

Microsoft Corp Licensed Material - Property of Microsoft All rights reserved

which Google says comes from MS-DOS. I guess it's just some uninitialised RAM.

I was hoping for some cheat codes for this game but it looks like there aren't any...

Maxim wrote

Notice that the language select screen shows a Brazilian map/flag for the Portuguese setting. Being a late development, maybe they had that market more in mind?

That also appears in the Mega Drive and PC versions, I'm afraid.

Maxim wrote

One pretty good way to play Power Drive with LCD persistence is to... play it on a slow LCD :) It looks pretty good on S8DS and ApprenticeMinusDS, although I think the DS screen tends to darker colours and it looks like the game's expecting the opposite?

Likely because the Game Gear uses a passive matrix LCD display and the DS uses active matrix. On passive matrix high voltage colors decay for a few frames (100ms or so) increasing overall brightness as the wind down takes longer than the wind up.

Due to Omar's request I've added emulation of the passive matrix display to RetroCopy. So games like PowerDrive are a little more enjoyable now.

I made a video showcasing a few Game Gear games that use the effect, Ayrton Senna's Super Monaco GP II and PowerDrive. I also put in some SMS games to show how it looks if you played them on an old LCD monitor. I couldn't edit the video as my editor doesn't like 60FPS content, so you basically get exactly what I did in the video.

Download a 60FPS video of it in action here (28MB)
http://www.retrocopy.com/downloads/passive_matrix_lcd_emulation.zip

Or you can view a 30FPS version of it, which doesn't show the effect very well, on youtube here :-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuYHvmiQodc

Can you describe the theory behind the blending? I'd have gone for a ~50% merge at first.

Maxim wrote

Can you describe the theory behind the blending? I'd have gone for a ~50% merge at first.

That is what I tried some time ago, as a brief test. However it was inadequate. After reading up a bit more about passive matrix displays recently it became obvious as to why.

I currently don't do the contrast limitation emulation of passive matrix display but just the wind up/down. Basically there is a fast take up of voltages applied. ie RED 0x00 to RED 0xFF is very fast, 5-10ms. But it losing power is much longer, so if a sub pixel in a frame sequence is like this,

0x00 -> 0xFF -> 0x00 -> 0x00 -> 0x00 -> 0x00 -> 0x00
then in reality its something more like
0x00 -> 0xFF -> 0xBF -> 0xA0 -> 0x7A -> 0x4C -> 0x20

This method produces quite nice results very similar to how these passive displays look, though knowing the exact decay information of relevant displays would be handy. I have given a few different decays methods, and all of them are rather interesting looking. Some make games look a lot more smooth and "better", especially the fake 3d driving games like outrun.

RetroRalph wrote

0x00 -> 0xFF -> 0xBF -> 0xA0 -> 0x7A -> 0x4C -> 0x20

That's almost linear. Wouldn't it be more likely to be exponential? Something like:

outputElement = max(inputElement, lastValue - (lastValue - inputElement) / 4)

gives a more exponential decay on similar timescales. The 4 is the exponential parameter, obviously powers of 2 will compute faster. If the curve should go the other way, it's a bit more complicated.

RetroRalph wrote

Some make games look a lot more smooth and "better", especially the fake 3d driving games like outrun.

This kind of visual feedback is often used in racing games to give an enhanced sense of speed.

Maxim wrote

RetroRalph wrote

0x00 -> 0xFF -> 0xBF -> 0xA0 -> 0x7A -> 0x4C -> 0x20

That's almost linear. Wouldn't it be more likely to be exponential?

Hard to know the exact decay method, I give a variety for that reason, I just used linear for the example I was giving. They all look roughly the same though given the same length of it being over 25% strength. The time scale is relatively small to notice such minute differences I guess.

I finally finished Power Drive. Once you get used to the controls (the car rotation is a low-precision proxy for the wheel angle), it's OK but quite impossible due to not being able to see far enough ahead. An emulator with rewind gets you the equivalent of that (rather than having to memorise the tracks), and then you're left with a hard but fair game.

It's also very long, over 2 hours to play through if you win every race.

I just finished mapping Power Drive. It might make it a bit easier to play through if you know what's coming :) and the artwork is pretty impressive.

http://www.smspower.org/Maps/PowerDrive-GG

Maxim wrote

I just finished mapping Power Drive. It might make it a bit easier to play through if you know what's coming :) and the artwork is pretty impressive.

http://www.smspower.org/Maps/PowerDrive-GG

Wow, you did a fantastic job, it looks like a ton of effort was involved. :D

The artwork for the races in Sweden is quite nice, I was not expecting the reflections of objects on the ice. Too bad they did not make a Genesis version of this game.

Charles MacDonald wrote

Too bad they did not make a Genesis version of this game.

http://www.mobygames.com/game/genesis/power-drive

Perhaps he's referring to a NTSC release...

Author	Message
Bock Site Admin Joined: 08 Jul 2001 Posts: 8651 Location: Paris, France	Power Drive (GG), Jungle Strike (GG), Ax Battler [Proto] (GG) Posted: Sun Oct 03, 2010 6:12 am
	As promised yesterday, two long awaited releases and a special thanks to friend of the people NonShinyGoose for helping on those. Power Drive for the Game Gear. Released in Europe in 1994, Power Drive is a top down rally-ish racing game with charming little cars and steep controls that at every turn will forcefully remind you about the concept of momentum. The Game Gear version is a particularly rare item and it went under our radar for a long amount of time. Working on creating games entries for the site recently made me realize that I knew nothing about that game, and the internet also had zero information or screenshots about it. This gap is now filled and we have dump of the game as well as a stock of obligatory screenshots to feed the network. It bear a very "Amiga 1994" look, from pre-rendered 3D sprites (probably an exciting thing to technology addicts at the time) down to cheesy colored gradient fonts and a nice animation touch with the race-start countdown effect using line animation. It looks like it could have been a great game if only the controls weren't so awkward (edit: and the fonts color changed). The game uses a lots of flickering tricks taking advantage of LCD persistence from the Game Gear screen, which leads to visible flickering in most emulators. Do we have an emulator simulating the Game Gear LCD screen already? Next we have Jungle Strike for the Game Gear. Sitting between Desert Strike and Urban Strike, the second episode of popular "strike" serie, leading you to South America to fight semi-imaginary drug lords. Although not on par with the 16-bit releases, it is a complete and polished product featuring a mix of action and exploration-strategy. Finally we've got a nifty Ax Battler - A Legend of Golden Axe Prototype for the Game Gear. Based on the Golden Axe universe, this 1991 Action-RPG hybrid release is one of the game defining the early Game Gear era. It's pretty classic in contents but benefits from a competent execution for its time in the Game Gear cycle. With 14 releases, it looks like we've done pretty good this week! :)

Bock Site Admin Joined: 08 Jul 2001 Posts: 8651 Location: Paris, France	Temporary Transitional Attachment Fairy Posted: Sun Oct 03, 2010 7:33 am
	This message will auto destruct itself someday. power_drive-gg.zip (275.93 KB) jungle_strike-gg.zip (247.88 KB) ax_battler-proto-gg.zip (140.74 KB)

English Invader Joined: 30 Aug 2009 Posts: 162 Location: Hertfordshire, UK	Posted: Sun Oct 03, 2010 8:45 am
	Bock wrote Do we have an emulator simulating the Game Gear LCD screen already? It might be better to use Kega Fusion rather than Meka.

Bock Site Admin Joined: 08 Jul 2001 Posts: 8651 Location: Paris, France	Posted: Sun Oct 03, 2010 11:18 am
	English Invader wrote Bock wrote Do we have an emulator simulating the Game Gear LCD screen already? It might be better to use Kega Fusion rather than Meka. As far as I know there is no render plugin for Kega doing that either. It should be easy to develop one though. The best example is Super Monaco GP 2 menus which alternate colors fast in a way that it looks awful with emulators.

NonShinyGoose Joined: 19 Mar 2010 Posts: 272 Location: UK	Posted: Sun Oct 03, 2010 7:09 pm
	I really like Power Drive. Shame not many people got to play it - it's the type of game that shows off what the GameGear could do when tickled in the right places.

revon Joined: 19 Sep 2008 Posts: 29	Posted: Mon Oct 04, 2010 4:17 pm
revon Joined: 19 Sep 2008 Posts: 29	Thanks for the Power Drive rom. This is another game I was waiting a long time. Power Drive game is very well done, but the cars are impossible to control (skid a lot) and this affects the gameplay.

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14741 Location: London	Posted: Mon Oct 18, 2010 1:01 pm
	One pretty good way to play Power Drive with LCD persistence is to... play it on a slow LCD :) It looks pretty good on S8DS and ApprenticeMinusDS, although I think the DS screen tends to darker colours and it looks like the game's expecting the opposite? Overall I'm finding it quite tough, but reasonably realistic. The music seems really odd, though. Hint for the Sweden skills test: stop on the STOP marker and wait for the GO. Reverse into the parking space (D/U while stopped to select direction) and wait for the GO again. For the spiral thing, you've done it right when the cones disappear. Stop on the EXIT marker to finish.

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14741 Location: London	Posted: Thu Oct 21, 2010 4:55 pm
	90 minutes into the game and my savestate got corrupted :( Notice that the language select screen shows a Brazilian map/flag for the Portuguese setting. Being a late development, maybe they had that market more in mind? The ROM contains this text: Quote Microsoft Corp Licensed Material - Property of Microsoft All rights reserved which Google says comes from MS-DOS. I guess it's just some uninitialised RAM. I was hoping for some cheat codes for this game but it looks like there aren't any...

Cyberquake Joined: 10 Jan 2005 Posts: 60 Location: Porto, Portugal	Posted: Fri Oct 22, 2010 12:48 am
	Maxim wrote Notice that the language select screen shows a Brazilian map/flag for the Portuguese setting. Being a late development, maybe they had that market more in mind? That also appears in the Mega Drive and PC versions, I'm afraid.

RetroRalph Joined: 27 Oct 2009 Posts: 138	Posted: Sun Oct 24, 2010 3:48 am
RetroRalph Joined: 27 Oct 2009 Posts: 138	Maxim wrote One pretty good way to play Power Drive with LCD persistence is to... play it on a slow LCD :) It looks pretty good on S8DS and ApprenticeMinusDS, although I think the DS screen tends to darker colours and it looks like the game's expecting the opposite? Likely because the Game Gear uses a passive matrix LCD display and the DS uses active matrix. On passive matrix high voltage colors decay for a few frames (100ms or so) increasing overall brightness as the wind down takes longer than the wind up.

RetroRalph Joined: 27 Oct 2009 Posts: 138	Posted: Sun Oct 24, 2010 5:23 am
RetroRalph Joined: 27 Oct 2009 Posts: 138	Due to Omar's request I've added emulation of the passive matrix display to RetroCopy. So games like PowerDrive are a little more enjoyable now. I made a video showcasing a few Game Gear games that use the effect, Ayrton Senna's Super Monaco GP II and PowerDrive. I also put in some SMS games to show how it looks if you played them on an old LCD monitor. I couldn't edit the video as my editor doesn't like 60FPS content, so you basically get exactly what I did in the video. Download a 60FPS video of it in action here (28MB) http://www.retrocopy.com/downloads/passive_matrix_lcd_emulation.zip Or you can view a 30FPS version of it, which doesn't show the effect very well, on youtube here :- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuYHvmiQodc

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14741 Location: London	Posted: Sun Oct 24, 2010 8:52 pm
	Can you describe the theory behind the blending? I'd have gone for a ~50% merge at first.

RetroRalph Joined: 27 Oct 2009 Posts: 138	Posted: Mon Oct 25, 2010 2:02 am
RetroRalph Joined: 27 Oct 2009 Posts: 138	Maxim wrote Can you describe the theory behind the blending? I'd have gone for a ~50% merge at first. That is what I tried some time ago, as a brief test. However it was inadequate. After reading up a bit more about passive matrix displays recently it became obvious as to why. I currently don't do the contrast limitation emulation of passive matrix display but just the wind up/down. Basically there is a fast take up of voltages applied. ie RED 0x00 to RED 0xFF is very fast, 5-10ms. But it losing power is much longer, so if a sub pixel in a frame sequence is like this, 0x00 -> 0xFF -> 0x00 -> 0x00 -> 0x00 -> 0x00 -> 0x00 then in reality its something more like 0x00 -> 0xFF -> 0xBF -> 0xA0 -> 0x7A -> 0x4C -> 0x20 This method produces quite nice results very similar to how these passive displays look, though knowing the exact decay information of relevant displays would be handy. I have given a few different decays methods, and all of them are rather interesting looking. Some make games look a lot more smooth and "better", especially the fake 3d driving games like outrun.

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14741 Location: London	Posted: Mon Oct 25, 2010 9:41 am
	RetroRalph wrote 0x00 -> 0xFF -> 0xBF -> 0xA0 -> 0x7A -> 0x4C -> 0x20 That's almost linear. Wouldn't it be more likely to be exponential? Something like: outputElement = max(inputElement, lastValue - (lastValue - inputElement) / 4) gives a more exponential decay on similar timescales. The 4 is the exponential parameter, obviously powers of 2 will compute faster. If the curve should go the other way, it's a bit more complicated. RetroRalph wrote Some make games look a lot more smooth and "better", especially the fake 3d driving games like outrun. This kind of visual feedback is often used in racing games to give an enhanced sense of speed.

RetroRalph Joined: 27 Oct 2009 Posts: 138	Posted: Mon Oct 25, 2010 12:18 pm
RetroRalph Joined: 27 Oct 2009 Posts: 138	Maxim wrote RetroRalph wrote 0x00 -> 0xFF -> 0xBF -> 0xA0 -> 0x7A -> 0x4C -> 0x20 That's almost linear. Wouldn't it be more likely to be exponential? Hard to know the exact decay method, I give a variety for that reason, I just used linear for the example I was giving. They all look roughly the same though given the same length of it being over 25% strength. The time scale is relatively small to notice such minute differences I guess.

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14741 Location: London	Posted: Tue Oct 26, 2010 8:23 am
	I finally finished Power Drive. Once you get used to the controls (the car rotation is a low-precision proxy for the wheel angle), it's OK but quite impossible due to not being able to see far enough ahead. An emulator with rewind gets you the equivalent of that (rather than having to memorise the tracks), and then you're left with a hard but fair game. It's also very long, over 2 hours to play through if you win every race.

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14741 Location: London	Posted: Mon Nov 08, 2010 9:12 am
	I just finished mapping Power Drive. It might make it a bit easier to play through if you know what's coming :) and the artwork is pretty impressive. http://www.smspower.org/Maps/PowerDrive-GG

Charles MacDonald Joined: 28 Sep 1999 Posts: 1197	Posted: Tue Nov 09, 2010 5:19 am
Charles MacDonald Joined: 28 Sep 1999 Posts: 1197	Maxim wrote I just finished mapping Power Drive. It might make it a bit easier to play through if you know what's coming :) and the artwork is pretty impressive. http://www.smspower.org/Maps/PowerDrive-GG Wow, you did a fantastic job, it looks like a ton of effort was involved. :D The artwork for the races in Sweden is quite nice, I was not expecting the reflections of objects on the ice. Too bad they did not make a Genesis version of this game.

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14741 Location: London	Posted: Tue Nov 09, 2010 9:11 am
	Charles MacDonald wrote Too bad they did not make a Genesis version of this game. http://www.mobygames.com/game/genesis/power-drive

Cyberquake Joined: 10 Jan 2005 Posts: 60 Location: Porto, Portugal	Posted: Tue Nov 09, 2010 9:53 am
	Perhaps he's referring to a NTSC release...

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