/vr/ - Retro Games

Yes.

>>7741585
>Not showing the master of 16 bits pixel art
Shiggy diggy

>>7741573
That's barely impressive.

>>7741573
try though they might with homebrews the game design and artwork will always look modern especially the character design and choice of colors neither of which were what they would have done in 1992.

Earthworm Jim 1 and 2 are all you need to prove this point.

>>7741768
Is this an observation or a criticism?

>>7741768
That is the problem with those games. They always have modern designs. It's the kind of game that I can't see being released back then.

No shit, they had 16 bits to work with, do you have any idea how permissive that is? You can do a lot of detail and shading.

>>7741768
>>7741786
I really wish there was an actual style guide on how to make homebrew games for retro consoles look, you know, retro.

>>7741768
>>7741786
>muh anachronistic art style in a game made in 2020s

too bad about that sound though. the ringtone my rice cooker makes when it finishes cooking is better than 99.9% of genesis soundtracks

it's not to be ashamed, the Mega Drive lasted a decade and games in the beginning looked different from those at the end. Early stuff clearly looks like 1989-90 in its art style, design choices, and general "feel."

>>7741786
>>7741793
>boohoo games released for consoles from 1992 today should look like they're from 1992 because there aren't enough games from 1992 already
Instead of celebrating gaining a little variety you complain that you don't get more of the same, you fucking shmucks.

and a late game like this definitely looks like the mid-90s

>>7741810
This looks fucking awful and there's nothing anyone can do to convince me that games looking like this should be made today.

>>7741797
a shame that in the cartridge era at least Nintendo had far better sound hardware. there's absolutely no contest when you consider how much worse the Master System and Genesis sound to their Nintendo rivals

>>7741813
I play retro games because I hate modern games(and their modern design), why the fuck would I want to play modern design released for old consoles?

>>7741813
I would but anything made after 2006 looks too god damn colorful and cute in the wrong way.

>>7741825
The MD was scaled down arcade hardware and arcade machines in that time in general didn't have very good sound, it was usually some off-the-shelf Yamama PSG that sounded like the music was being played inside a tin can.

>>7741768
Especially the abundant use of vaporwave colors (all that blue and pink) is distinctly 2010s.

>>7741825
You shouldn't mistake better sound on average for better hardware. The Mega Drive sound chip is like the PS3 of fourth gen sound, technically more capable but more complicated to program so a lot of developers half assed it.

Also a lot of people have exposure bias from having owned an SNES and preferring its sound because they're used to it. I had neither and I find both intriguing when they're done well.

>>7741826
Nobody forces you to play modern games for old consoles, and it's not like you're starved for choice when it comes to actual old games. Would having one additional old-styled game really make a difference?

>>7741848
LOLno the SNES is far more bullshit to program because the sound chip has its own instruction set which is literally just 6502 opcodes but with completely different pnemonics for some reason. That said, the Mega Drive couldn't possibly do ALTTP's music or some of Square's soundtracks.

>>7741852
Anon, I just said I don't like. It doesn't make a difference for me because I'm not going to play it, it was this guy that went full retard:
>>7741813
just because someone said something about those homebrews.

>>7741856
And a fire truck can't be a dump truck. What's your point? They're different systems and an SNES soundtrack will very obviously be programmed to take specific advantage of the SNES hardware.

>>7741848
>Also a lot of people have exposure bias from having owned an SNES and preferring its sound because they're used to it.
This actually goes both ways.

>I had neither and I find both intriguing when they're done well.
True. For a good comparison, see the soundtrack to the official port of Doom to the 32X, versus some dude on YouTube recreating the soundtrack proper for the FM Synth, it ends up sounding very good.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-peEeGK77Us&list=PLL-sMa2lHYj2zzaAn0KldBSXKGLMcKONt
https://youtu.be/FehpU0sjXrQ

The SNES had its own shares of masterpieces and turds when it came to music.

I feel the MD's twangly sound fit gritty games like Streets of Rage better while the SNES's soft sound fit cute games like SMW better.

>>7741573
Look at all the layers in the background.

>>7741813
it's not good. I'm not going to celebrate it. Move on.

>>7741902
Feel free to ignore it.

>>7741573
Is that one at least good or just hipster millenial woke bait?

At least MD games (almost) never have bank switching so you don't end up with the problem you get with NES homebrew where games are all NROM or UNROM 512 because they can get those boards from AliExpress cheaply.

>>7741952
This could be avoided if they just put the ROM on Steam instead of insisting on a physical cartridge release.

>>7741848
Not really, it’s just most megadrive games used the comic sans of preset instruments

>>7741573
>>7741789
This. At their best (aka games that aren't arcade ports) the Genesis and SNES ran some beautiful games.
1988 hardware competing with 1994

>>7741971
Meant for >>7741825

>>7741961
I don't get the reason for it either. devs back in the 80s would have killed for the freedom to use any available cartridge configuration instead of what was available and the publisher was willing to pay for. so why make a physical cartridge release and limit yourself like that?

>>7741961
Because people want to own it physically to play on their original hardware obviously. Saying nesfags should deal with steam is retarded

>>7741995
you can...uh...put it on an Everdrive if you want to play it on a real console? derp.

Don't homebrew guys insist on physical releases so the game doesn't get pirated? I've heard that before.

>>7742005
Few retrofags will want to do that. If they are playing on original hardware, odds are they want an original official cart release of it. No reason nes homebrew devs cant just release the rom to download and play either by a emulator or ported to run on other platforms, which they already do, but to say "No, just get a flash cart and buy the rom", is going to kill a large portion of interest in your homebrew you want to get paid for making.

>>7741913
I wipe shit

Amazon's Running Diet was just released as a free ROM download though that was made by some Japanese guys. that was MMC3 IIRC.

Actually the big issue with modern homebrew is that a lot of this stuff is made by Euro demosceners and as usual they will never ever into game design.

>>7741573
Vectorman and Gunstar Heroes obviously looked butter!

>>7741768
It's more like they make stuff like noodle limb sprites that nobody would have done back in the day because it turned into an illegible mess on the typical 80s consumer TV>

>>7742138
The bg graphics are pretty nice and look like something that a commercial NES game could have convincingly used.

>>7741573
No SNES homebrew of note because it's so shitty to code for that nobody can be bothered.

>>7741819
>This looks fucking awful
You can't even appreciate it's character design. Back to /v/ with you.

>>7741573
You just like the colors a lot, tastes have changed since the 90's.

>>7741768
In english please?

what were the biggest and smallest Mega Drive games released anyway?

>>7742204
>Biggest
I think Phantasy Star IV was the biggest with 64 bit mega powah!!!

Phantasy Star IV is 24 megabits so it's not the largest one at all, there are 17 games to use a 32 megabit ROM and Super Street Fighter II is 40 megabits

>>7741573
>>7741585
>>7741641
based indie pixel artists flexing on old hardware than eurojankers do

>>7741794
*taps on your prescription*

>>7742221
Flink is literally textbook eurojank, idiot.

>>7741845
cyan, magenta, and yellow/orange desu

>>7742228
keyed unorthrodox eurojank game then

>>7742204
I think SSF2 was the largest one released in the Mega Drive's commercial lifespan. As for the smallest, Flicky, Columns, and Ms. Pac-Man use a 1 mbit ROM although they don't actually use all that space--the latter two are about 80k in size and Flicky is only 42k, meaning that 62% of the ROM is empty and unused.

>>7742204
https://sega.fandom.com/wiki/Beggar_Prince
The Taiwan number 1 RPG!

Also FWIW PS4 is really 2.3MB, it doesn't use all of the ROM space it has either.

>>7742164
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=nekotako

So in that spirit I believe in fact Flicky is the smallest MD game in terms of the actual size of the code+graphics+sound data.

The smallest SNES game in terms of ROM space is Space Invaders which uses a 2 mb ROM and I do not know if there are any others but again it doesn't actually use all of the ROM and is in fact just 106k in size. In general SNES games are bigger than MD ones as the sound and graphics data don't compress as well.

>>7741573
>webm
it's just... bouncing there.

MENACINGLY!!

>>7742314
>>7742235
lyl why didn't they just use a smaller ROM instead of waste that space?

>>7742326
Whatever ROM size you can get a good deal on. (^:

>>7742030
theres no money in homebrew anyway

I looked at Ms. Pac-Man for the MD and the ROM has a ton of empty space, it's not even close to being filled up all the way.

>>7741573
That looks like shit.

>>7742360
Still, devs are getting more buyers for carts then ppl paying to DL the rom.

>>7742537
Again, it's not so big a deal with MD homebrew but it is a liability with NES homebrew due to the giant amount of cartridge configurations used and by insisting on a physical release you really limit what you can do with the game.

>>7742576
Check out orange island, pretty sure thats going to use custom guts in it. It wilk cost more to do, but can be done. Just cause nes devs could do it, doesn't mean they are going to so saying the mass available parts for boards is holding back the scene isnt really true at alk if the devs are not doing games that need them. In the end of the day though, nesfags regardless are still going to be more interested in paying for a real cart then they are paying to DL the rom for a flashcart.

>>7741815
big difference is the 3D revolution. You can clearly see how the sprites in that image were modeled in 3D software and then rendered as sprites. A hallmark of the days of Toy Story and Donkey Kong Country.

>>7742164
>he never played based Rape Games
cringe

>>7742149
yeah, when I saw the screenshot at first I thought it was from the first NES TMNT game.

>>7742592
but see they do stuff like an NROM homebrew that looks like a late period NES game from 1992 when if you're using that ROM size it makes more sense to do 1984-ish stuff like Door Door and Ice Climber with black backgrounds and very simple graphics. 'cause that's what NES games looked like in the beginning.

>>7742620
I think the issue is a lot of these guys are Euro demosceners who sucked at game design in 1985, they sucked at it in 1995, they sucked in 2005, they sucked in 2015, and they suck now.

Bootleg demakes will always be infinitely more impressive to me than any homebrew.

>>7742641
>homebrew more impressive than homebrew
nigga i'm too stoned for this kind of post

>>7742654
dude sneed lmao

>>7741815
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=249PzxUOHMM

they didn't do a bad job for a bong dev team making a game based on a fucking soda mascot

>>7741786
>>7741768
>>7741793
You are retarded.
>>7741573
Yes they can. The extra storage is what helps. Being limited to small storage size meant plenty of games had to force their games to look same-y and mostly 'ugly'. Tricks have also been invented that developers just didn't do or know about, that further color and sprites.

>>7742016
No. They make money from collectors that NEED every cart.

>>7742695
>Tricks have also been invented that developers just didn't do or know about, that further color and sprites
That's called having modern tools to design art and homebrew guys having all the time in the world to perfect the artwork instead of having to get it finished in 3 months.

>>7742138
the background? its decent
the characters? lol

oh wah wah wah they made a MD homebrew and the characters dialog had a joke about Reddit in it. as if back in the day they totally never inserted cheesy forced 90s pop culture references.

>ridiculously_bouncing_mario.gif

>>7741789
16-bit color implies 65,336 colors. the Mega Drive only had 512 (9-bit color) and could display 64 on screen at once while the SNES had 262,144 colors (18-bit color) and could display 256 on screen at once.

>>7742890

>>7742890
>>7742902
MORE

>>7742837
Still cringe and uninspired

>>7742902
>upgrade

>>7742620
I guessed it's because they imagine people expect an NES game to look like that instead of Ice Climber.

>>7742896
What would happen if a scene had more color than what a console could display? Would some colors just be equal to some neighbor color instead of their original color?

what about that dude who was shitting on Micro Mages because he complained the sprites were too small?

>>7741793
I don't think you could if you wanted to because retro game art styles were intuitive and came out of the cultural environment of the time. so you couldn't make a game look like 1992 simply because it isn't 1992.

>>7742904
>>7742908
MORE

>>7742221
Why didn't games back then have detail like that? Do graphics like this only seem intuitive in hindsight?
>>7742764
It cuts both ways. Some pixel art designs need a CRT to look good, which is a bad idea for any current game except for if it only runs on original hardware.
>inb4 zoomer

>>7742939

It doesn't work this way. You have 4 palettes, 16 colors each. Any tile uses only these 16 colors, and you decide which palette (from 4) this tile will use. Then, there can be some trickery with mid-frame color change (like Sonic underwater palette) or use of shadow/highlight tech, but in simplest case you have only 4*16= 64 colors. Even 61, because 1st color of each palette is transparency (only for 1st palette it used somehow - as a background base color).

Then, you can use cram graphics garbage to create more colors:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8qgArSqMsc
But that's a very strong magic.

>>7742904
zoom zoom

>>7742164
Nobody wants to work on an overclocked NES, they'd rather work on the NES and deal with its shortcomings or the Genesis because programmers fucking love the x68k way more than any other chip known to man.

>>7741972
Genesis had Blast Processing, how course it will run Sonic 3D Blast

>>7741810
Literal NES/SMS graphics on the Genesis. Shameful release even if it was early (the game sucks too)

>>7743715
>Nobody wants to work on an overclocked NES
i mean, the architecture just sucks and it requires you to jump through flaming hoops to do anything. the chipset is a lot more complex than the Mega Drive's, the sound processor is a pain to deal with, and the memory map organizes everything in retarded 64k segments like a DOS PC. yes it does offer more colors and some other neat features the Mega Drive doesn't have but just getting a tile map and sprites up and running is so much more work.

>>7743876
the Famicom port looks like a Gameboy game. kek.

surprised how readily Sega licensed ports of their games on other platforms back then

>>7744186
Sega's consoles weren't very successful in Japan so they licensed ports of their games as a means of getting some extra revenue to make up for it. They quit by 1991 once the Mega Drive's success in North America and PAL regions was assured, but in the mid-90s with the Saturn not doing so well they returned to licensing PC ports of games.

*blocks everybody's path*

>>7741573

Atari 2600 games can look this good?!

>>7743098
Damn son

>>7742941
One of the comfiest homebrews ive played for the nes and looks very nice, so fuck whomever said that

>>7744078
Exactly why programmers love the genesis. The 68K is still one of the most fun architectures to date.

>>7744254
cool, the MM programmer is in this thread

>>7744227
Is this the forgotten prequel to Daytona USA, Daytona Kenya?

>>7744227
strangely enough there wasn't anything else that could display 256 colors until the Amiga (designed by the same team amusingly)

>>7744227
That's a semi-modern (2006) homebrew.

You heard how Sega wanted to license (gulp) US Gold to port Sonic to home computers but then didn't because the MD was selling well enough? Dear god we dodged a bullet there.

>>7742904
giggled

>>7743715
in Japan all the arcade guys knew 68000 asm and Europe all the Amiga guys. in the US idk, 16-bit home computers weren't really popular here and it was more used in productivity/server/workstation machines.

>>7744584
Its a pity that Capcom didn't come to their senses before letting them loose on Strider...

>>7744584
>Sonic on the Amiga
>16 colours
>code is copypasted from the Atari ST so no use of the blitter
>15 fps
>press Up to jump
>pick either music or sfx
>huge US Gold logo occupying 1/3rd of the screen area
>in mid-jump
>Insert Disk 3

>>7744584
There's an off chance Probe or System 3 would have been assigned the port but most likely it would be Tiertex.

>>7744615
Couldn't be as bad as this

>>7744615
No amount of wishing would make the OCS Amiga be able to run Sonic anyway, at least not the Mega Drive one--the Master System Sonic could be ported easily.

>>7742620
So how do you pick a ROM size for a homebrew? Is it just like throwing a dart at a dartboard and going with what comes up?