pros & cons... 16 bit cd games.

[awack]

All right, lets do some WOT, this is just from the first level not including the boss.


The green dragon in the pce game will kick up dust as he moves along the sand, the second set of pics show the pce game with four frames instead of three frames for the collapsing hole that the scarab will pop out of.

PCE                                              Genesis



The water in the pce WOT is animated, the sega cd is not, you can also destroy the protruding rock which will explode and fall back down to earth, pushing Landis down if underneath. The Egyptian column is more detailed in the pce.

PCE                                              Genesis



Missing third scarab.

PCE                                                Genesis



The pce WOT tends to have more detail in the BGs and slightly better animation on a couple of smaller enemies(1st level only so far)



I looked for anything that was better in the sega cd and i just could not find any thing, not even parallax scrolling(1st level only).

[awack]

Pre rendered sprites, DKC and Sapphire, boss vs boss.

This was the best i could find for a boss in DKC, the death animation of the last boss.
I think most of the effort was put into Donkey Kong himself.


Spinning attack, 32 frames.







Death animation.





Mr Honkey dong has a large set of moves, each one with a large number of frames, his walk as shown below has 19 or 20 frames, but i cant find anything in DKC thats as impressive as what ive found in Sapphire.






Sprite specs.          PCE                    GENESIS                    SNES

sprites on screen:    64                      80                            128

sprites on line:        16                      20                            34

max texels online:    256                    320                            272               

texture width:        16, 32                8,16,24,32                  8,16,32,64

texture height:        16,32,64              8,16,24,32                  8,16,32,64

colors:                    15                    15                              15

[TurboXray]

Added some specs. Genesis high and low res modes have different sprite figures. Also added sprite cells. SNES has 34 8x8 cells or 32 sprites or 272 pixels per scanline. PCE and GENs can use any sprite size configuration in a single frame. SNES can only use two different sizes in a frame(onscreen). It's why some early SNES shooters/games had more flicker than later titles. Unoptimized use of two sprite sizes.

Code Select Expand

Sprite specs.           PCE                    GENESIS                     SNES
 
sprites on screen:      64                     64/80                       128

sprites per line:       16                     16/20                       32

max texels per line:    256                    256/320                     272               

min sprite cell:        16x16                  8x8                         8x8               

max cells per line:     16                     32/40                       34

texture width:          16, 32                 8,16,24,32                  8,16,32,64

texture height:         16,32,64               8,16,24,32                  8,16,32,64

colors:                 15                     15                          15


[awack]

Thanks Tom, the PCE doesn't look so strong compared to its rivals in this regard.



Bonk III hu card and CD.


Walk animation.

Hu card                                          CD




Transformation and jump.

Hu card                                        CD




Landing on head.

Hu card                                          CD

[Tatsujin]

why? 

[awack]

Good question.

Hu card game is 8Mb, Bonk CD is a super CD game=2Mb (+ half an Mb, ADPCM)

Another thing about CD games is that the music is being streamed from the Cd so none of the 2Mb has to be used for that, i don't think the music in this game takes up a lot of memory though.

Compare Rondo vs Drac XX, a 16 Mb game.... thats just the stuff i showed and doesn't include all the missing enemy sprites/animation per level.

If you look at Bonk Cd, it loads game info a lot, i don't want to guess how many times the Cd is read(not music) through out this game and each section doesn't have a large amount of detail and very little enemy character animation.

So, my only guess is memory allocation, a large portion of the 8Mb was used for the super sized Bonk and his animations....its still hard to believe and could also be that Bonk CD wasn't optimized and just thrown together fast for an American release.

[Tatsujin]

may be just a big potion of Amercian Fail

[TurboXray]

Wow. I never realized the US Bonk 3 CD was missing frames. No doubt a direct result of American coders 

Thanks Tom, the PCE doesn't look so strong compared to its rivals in this regard.

For sprite optimization, it's the weakest of the three - cell wise. For sprites that are small like 8x8 pixels (like bullets) or sprites inbetween 16 and 32 pixels wide (24 pixels). The SNES looks the best on paper, but there are limitations that bring it back down. Such as, sprites are limited between two 16k banks in vram. Not a super big deal, but it means in some situations it's not as flexible as PCE and Genesis in this respect (which can have sprites any in vram). But the real big problem on SNES is that you can only have two sprite sizes onscreen at a time. You could pic 32x16 & 8x8 or 32x32 & 16x16, etc but only two at a time. So while you can have more sprites per scanline and a bigger sprite table (128 sprites), you need that extra flexibility to make up for the two size only limit(which also translates into more sprite table entries out that 128 total). The Genesis strength comes in its high res mode. You can really optimize for flicker. Other wise its low res mode is mostly the same as PCEs. The PCE would scale its sprite per scanline limit for higher res modes too, like the Genesis, but for the single fact that the PCE's video chip only has 64 WORD buffer (256 4bit pixels). It's fast enough for the higher res modes to fetch more sprites, just no place to put them. 

 The port of LOT to SegaCD doesn't really gain any optimization of sprites cells because the game is practically optimized for 16x16 cells. So the Genesis is forced to use the same cell size, resulting in the same flicker conditions.

[Tatsujin]

it's soo hilarious that it should degrade that BONKEY 3 CD down to a 50cent game immediately!!

[Tatsujin]

Bonk III hu card and CD.


Walk animation.

Hu card                                          CD

[esteban]

Man, after seeing those sprite animations, Bonk 3 on CD is a letdown in more ways than one...

OK, who will sell me their copy of Bonk 3?

[Tatsujin]

Hu card                                          CD

[awack]

Golden Axe

PCE                                              Genesis

[esteban]

FRUMPY PCE                                    BADASS AMAZON

[_Paul]

And the sad this is the PCE version is even worse once you can hear it and see it moving. Telenet need to be spanked hard.
The Amiga Golden Axe was great, a really good copy of the Mega Drive.

[TurboXray]

 Telenet has a track record of doing minimal effort when it comes to most CD games, with a few exceptions later on. Low/generic colors/detail, minimal animation, almost no FXs/scrolls/etc, simplistic gameplay, simplistic artwork, simplistic/minimal PSG audio, etc. But this... is even below what I would expect from them.

[Tatsujin]

But this... is even below what I would expect from them.

right.. i even wouldn't have expected such a crap, if my grandmother had have done it.

[Tatsujin]

[awack]

The green dragon in the pce game will kick up dust as he moves along the sand, the second set of pics show the pce game with four frames instead of three frames for the collapsing hole that the scarab will pop out of.

PCE                                              Genesis



The water in the pce WOT is animated, the sega cd is not, you can also destroy the protruding rock which will explode and fall back down to earth, pushing Landis down if underneath. The Egyptian column is more detailed in the pce.

PCE                                              Genesis



Missing third scarab.

PCE                                                Genesis



The pce WOT tends to have more detail in the BGs and slightly better animation on a couple of smaller enemies(1st level only so far)



I looked for anything that was better in the sega cd and i just could not find any thing, not even parallax scrolling(1st level only).


Lets do some more Lords of Thunder, oh and this is not about colors since the pce emulator im using makes  LOT look a bit washed out.

The sega cd has six layers of scroll while the pce has three but the pce is more detailed with more rocks in the water etc, the art is a bit better too, like the way the grass is covering the bottom of the trees.

pce                                                sega


The pce has eight lines of scroll in the water while the sega cd has six that i could see, the pce water shimmers and the sega cd does not.

pce                                                sega


In the pce LOT the player sprite will make a splash every time leaves or enters water, the sega cd does not.

pce                                                sega



There is lightning in the pce game

                                                pce

                                                sega
                         




Fade out in the pce version.



Its hard to tale but the boss while still under water will move foward and then to the right in the pce LOT, in the sega cd the boss just moves from left to right.

In the last screen pce screen, the white arrow indicates where the line scroll ends.






Fir the sega cd, the line scrolls where the shortest arrow indicates.                       
                                            sega cd
                             



Simple fade in, not going to show every frame, the sega cd once again does not do this, the fade in represents you character going from a bright out side day to a dark cave and his eyes adjusting from a bright to a dark environment.





                                        sega cd
                               






pce                                                sega

[awack]

Something that is less apparent on a TV, are the squared tiles that make up the tree trunks, if my memory is correct, this is because dynamic tiles were used.