What games push the system?

[BigusSchmuck]

Guilliver Boy and its awesome fmv! Of course the game looks very similar to the Lunar remakes so definitely add that to your list. While we are at it, anything using HUvideo is pretty impressive...

[TurboXray]

I originally listed Detana Twinbee as a 6 meg game from memory, but double checked on pcecp which says it's only 4 meg. I wonder if it was a typo. I don't remember if the PCE Catalog discs list card size.

Just redownloaded the rom set and a correct dump of the hucard appears as 4megs. With the over dump filling in at 8megs. The game mirrors it in a strange way as if it's accessing a 6meg layout. But yeah, 4 meg.

[esteban]

I originally listed Detana Twinbee as a 6 meg game from memory, but double checked on pcecp which says it's only 4 meg. I wonder if it was a typo. I don't remember if the PCE Catalog discs list card size.

Just redownloaded the rom set and a correct dump of the hucard appears as 4megs. With the over dump filling in at 8megs. The game mirrors it in a strange way as if it's accessing a 6meg layout. But yeah, 4 meg.

What size is the overdump of SFII', pray tell?

[Digi.k]

I originally listed Detana Twinbee as a 6 meg game from memory, but double checked on pcecp which says it's only 4 meg. I wonder if it was a typo. I don't remember if the PCE Catalog discs list card size.

I think it is 4m

pretty sure their cart sizes were:

Gradius 2mbit
Salamander 2mbit
Parodius DA 8mbit
Detana twin bee 4mbit

[wildfruit]

4 mega power!

[JoshTurboTrollX]

Download 2 for it's bitch'n soundtrack, crazy parallax and awesome cut-scenes!!

[VenomMacbeth]

Regarding Metamor Jupiter, while the "mode-7" effect is impressive, it's actually just a line scrolling effect & doesn't seem to manipulate the bg layer in 3D.  You can tell by how the top & bottom of the "tube" don't seem closer to you.  Compare it to Super Castlevania IV, and possibly Ranger-X.  Anyone care to prove me wrong?

[ccovell]

Metamor Jupiter has pseudo-3D barrel rotation (X and Y scrolling adjustments), although the farther parts of the tube indeed don't shrink in size as Castlevania 4's do.  But Ranger-X's tube is totally static (no rotation) and just does simple line scrolling (X only) as dozens of games do.

One of the few games that I know of which copies CV4's effect using scrolling & software tricks only is Brian the Lion on the Amiga.  Check it out:

Great effects throughout that video, but the tube's at the end.

[TurboXray]

Regarding Metamor Jupiter, while the "mode-7" effect is impressive, it's actually just a line scrolling effect & doesn't seem to manipulate the bg layer in 3D.  You can tell by how the top & bottom of the "tube" don't seem closer to you.  Compare it to Super Castlevania IV, and possibly Ranger-X.  Anyone care to prove me wrong?

It's more than just line scrolling. It's compressing the BG layer at the top and bottom; hsync Y repositioning to scale the BG layer vertically in those parts. The X offset per line is to give the illusion that it's round. The PCE doesn't have two BG layers, so it's also updating BG color #0 on a per scanline basis to give it constant shading regardless of the rotation (light source if you will).

 Ranger X is just line scrolling (tunnel part). There's a way to do the CV4 tunnel effect on the PCE (I did wrote a demo once to show it off), but it doesn't leave a lot of room for detail. The shading at the depth part is decent, but not as good as CV4 (16 subpalettes for the BG works great for this, but the PCE master palette is the limiting part).

^- @ 27:04 the fake BG layer with transparency (dynamic tiles).

Also, Night Creatures holds the record on PCE/TG16 for largest dynamic tile area per frame. It does a 128x128 pixel block of the back ground to simulate a parallax area of the BG - all with dynamic tiles.

 Psychic Storm uses 60hz color flashing on the last ship to get more shades of red.

[Prosolis]

pcengine-fx.com/reviews/duomazov/2013/01/seiya-monogatari-anearth-fantasy-stories.html


Yeah, Anearth Fantasy Stories definitely pushes the system to its max graphically, looking like a SNES RPG. Of course you gotta do Sapphire in such an episode, obvious one. Short on other ideas ATM. Many already mentioned.

O:)

Ah, I see what you did there! I thought it was just a smiley at first. ;)

This game looks amazing. Anyone know if the mechanics and story are on par with the graphics ?

EDIT: Just read the review which was extremely glowing. I'll have to track this down and play it.

[NightWolve]

I thought I heard that it is unfortunately a little short ? Or that might've been the case for Legend of Xanadu II, another RPG that pushes the limits. Can't recall for sure.

EDIT: Well, here's a whole guide on it.

https://www.tg-16.com/anearth/intro.html
(Lost: m1sz1.com/anearth/intro.html by m1savage)

[CrackTiger]

Anearth Fantasy Stories is definitely not short. Fans of SYSTEM-based JRPGs should love the game mechanics, such as zero random fights, enemies disappearing forever once they're defeated, leveling of attributes based on use, spells spending combos of items instead of points, attacks based on positioning, etc.

It's the kind of stuff that people like to use as a calculation that proves quality, but I don't like most of that stuff and prefer what were once called "traditional" JRPGs.

[VenomMacbeth]

It's a shame you don't see more wacky special effects on the PCE, but I suppose that's indicative of its relative non-adherence to the "graphics-over-gameplay" craze that was going on at the time, as compared to the Genesis and especially the SNES.

[Psycho Punch]

Holy shit did that tube effect blow my mind. One thing though, you can view it as if it were at the inside the tube as well as if it were the outside. I watched the video on the tube part only and couldn't tell if it was one or another.

[TurboXray]

It's a shame you don't see more wacky special effects on the PCE, but I suppose that's indicative of its relative non-adherence to the "graphics-over-gameplay" craze that was going on at the time, as compared to the Genesis and especially the SNES.

I looked at Neutopia 2 recently (for game research stuffs), and I found that the game uses full screen h-sync effects ~ALL~ the time (it's always running). Whether it's something with it or not. It simulates a HDMA (SNES) or ScrollList (Genesis). Just thought that was interesting. Even if you don't see it, it's updating all kinds of VDC regs (X/Y/BG/SPR) every scanline, on every frame.

[ccovell]

Yes, that's how Neutopia II does that venetian blind effect when going to the item/map screen.

[esteban]

Yes, that's how Neutopia II does that venetian blind effect when going to the item/map screen.

Ha, so is it fair to claim there is a "purpose" for the routine to be running at all times?

[TurboXray]

Yes, that's how Neutopia II does that venetian blind effect when going to the item/map screen.

Ha, so is it fair to claim there is a "purpose" for the routine to be running at all times?

Well.. hehe, they could have made a switch to enable/disable this per frame. But I guess they figured they had enough cpu resource to run for every frame of the game.

 This is why the game will slow down if you use the tototek flash card with cheat switch on, and a lot of stuff is on screen. Tototek card did some sort of bus watching for the vector access, inserted its own code to change values in PCE ram, and branched to the original game's code. Or at least, this is how I assume it works. The VDC (video) interrupt vector is the same for all VDC interrupts, so the tototek card one gets triggered on every scanline as well.

[SamIAm]

Talking about games that push the limits is the kind of nerdy stuff I live for, but I think it's easy to overlook how multi-dimensional "pushing the limits" really is.

In one dimension, you can look at how optimized the CPU program is - whether it's working as efficiently as possible to make the most things happen without causing too much slowdown. Games that push this limit will have things like a bazillion complex moving objects onscreen, or some graphical effect that needs a lot of CPU assistance. GoT on the PCE might be this system's best example of this, but I wouldn't know for sure.

In another dimension, you can look at how fully the game utilizes all the different hardware functions available to it. For example, the Saturn has 5 simultaneous background layers available, two of which can be "mode-7" style, but it's rare to see a game actually use all of them. It's not that it's so hard to "turn on" all five layers in a programming environment, but rather that designing such a background, and having it jive with your game itself and fit nicely in the system's RAM, is difficult. For the PCE, games that use the palettes well, display lots of sprites without flicker, pack the VRAM efficiently with sprites and BG tiles, and use scanline tricks would fit in this category.

One of the more enlightening interviews with Treasure that I've read quoted one of their designers as saying that they've never really done a lot of heavy programming, but rather they've always taken everything that's plainly there in the hardware - no more, no less - and combined it with good design.

Finally, I think another dimension might be when a game uses a system in an unorthodox way. Maybe it could be something seemingly impossible for the hardware, and it could involve undocumented hardware exploits and weird hacks. I'm not really sure what the best examples of this are, though, especially on the PCE. Maybe Art of Fighting and its weird resolution-scaling.

I wonder what PCE game makes the most of all three of these dimensions?

[esteban]

^I agree, clarifying the different ways a game can "push the limits" can help us in this discussion.

Another aspect that I've been contemplating is how the bar (the "limit") gets pushed higher and higher as a function of time. So, when we talk about games that "push the limits"...do we end up (mostly) discussing games from the end of a console's life?

What about examples of "pushing the limit" earlier in console's life?

For example, can we talk about Populous HuCARD and the extra RAM as pushing the console? Or was that never particularly impressive? Or was that impressive initially, but eclipsed later by other games, with better (software-based) solutions (I.e. mappers)?

Forgive me because I'm not technical, but I am intrigued by what it means to truly "push the technical limits" of a system. HuVIDEO might be technically impressive, but...

[NightWolve]

Is Joe even doing a part 2 for this ? Cause not a single PCE/TG-16 game made it into the video he produced, so the purpose of the thread is kinda over unless we just wanna continue answering the question for the hell of it.

[Niko49]

pcengine-fx.com/reviews/duomazov/2013/01/seiya-monogatari-anearth-fantasy-stories.html




Yeah, Anearth Fantasy Stories definitely pushes the system to its max graphically, looking like a SNES RPG. Of course you gotta do Sapphire in such an episode, obvious one. Short on other ideas ATM. Many already mentioned.

Wow that game looks great! Was there ever an English translation for it ?

[Sadler]

Not yet, but hopefully someday after LOX2.

[PukeSter]

I'll do a top 10 hucard list, only the best looking games

1. Bomberman 94
2. Soldier blade
3. Samurai ghost
4. Street fighter ii
5. Darius plus
6. New adventure island
7. Air zonk
8. 1943 kai
9. Bomberman 93
10. R-type