/vr/ - Retro Games

>no-one should make games because they're technically inferior to to what comes later and will always be shitty by future standards

>>8467575
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrYti1nI7aA

2/2


While retro games are fun the NES era suffered form multiple problems one of them is hardware limitations the other devs deliberately making their games hard and shit developers simply making shit to get quick money.

You also must keep in mind that game engine buying did not exist back in the day. Every studio made their own code fragments that get recycled in the next game and did not sell these.So you are mega fucked over when everyone is hording their proto-game engines.

What was the first game that licensed its engine ? Quake I think. Or was it also back in DOOM ?

And it was 100% the SNES hardware see what shit you need to do make a game viable on the NES
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWQ0591PAxM

It was never: Oh lets have this many pillars and this many steps or this written on the wall.

See OP picture. Want this on the NES ?
1) LOL
2) Not happening to many colors
3) Lol you just saturated 100% of the game cartridge with only this picture.

To give you some perspective. There is an ATARI game that does not use the NES style (final fantasy) text boxes. It will only display a number and you are to open a included PAPER book on that page to read what the game is saying.

They did not have space for long text back in the day. You literally could not make whatever game you liked back in the day.

>>8467587
But there's more. There was also ROM size and whatever mapper hardware the NES cart used and this varied depending on the time period and developer. One did not have the ability to do a 256k MMC3 game in 1986.

>>8467585
>>no-one should make games because they're technically inferior to to what comes later and will always be shitty by future standards
NO. The post is a retrospective on how it was back in the day.

The pre SNES games where extra limited. Especially ATARI. I only explain that whatever you imagine you can not make any game on that hardware you can try however you will always hit limitations and play memory saving IRL programing games more then thinking of cool ways to make the map.

>they're technically inferior to to what comes later and
No after 2001 practically anything is possible (PS1 era) full voice acted dialog whatever map size you like and no meta sprite compression IRL programing games.

In 2016 any story is possible. I was explaining that on the NES you can not simply go
>I like to have 7 different looking pillars here
You simply can not ! You must work in the limitations of the NES (or even the ATARI).

There is no experience that can change this. You can only have a limited number of 4 color ONLY pallets and then there is nothing.

To give you some idea on ATARI things got so hardcore that one game literally used its own source code of the game itself to generate a different looking barrier. This is reuse extreme !

More info
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vH-D6GdkyCw

We get it, you hate retro games. You didn't have to make two threads for that.

>>8467649
He's not wrong tbqh. 8-bit machines are absurdly limited.

>>8467649
>We get it, you hate retro games. You didn't have to make two threads for that.
I do not ! I'm literally explaining to you the limitations of the hardware.

>you hate
Actually my thread can be used to explain to zoomers who hate on retro games that they can not do everything there since they are limited so everything before the SNES is excused.

You have to appreciate the level of of puzzle solving they needed to play to make their games fit in this tiny space on the cartridge.

And some things will be sacrificed like level design or needing to do long days of coding to make the sound work.

the 16-bit consoles have 128k of RAM. compared with the NES's 2k (or up to 10k if you had cartridge RAM) it's like the space of a tractor trailer compared with the back seat of a Camaro.

>>8464934

>Seven huge continents
takes some very clever asset reuse to pull this off

What is the point of this thread OP?
Just say you like the SNES better than the NES and fuck off retard.

>>8467792
>What is the point of this thread OP?
See >>8467440

>>8467575
Everyone knows this? What point are you trying to make?

now you will consider that the NES has just 64 sprites which are only 8x8 pixels. most objects will have to be made from several. you cannot put more than 8 of them on a line or the PPU won't display the extra ones. you cannot access the PPU registers or RAM when it's actively drawing the screen and the CPU is less than 2Mhz. it's also a gimped 6502 with no BCD mode which means extra programming gymnastics for game score counters and whatnot.

>>8467575
>>8467587
How old are you? Just curious, please be honest.

>>8468080
30

>>8468067
>you cannot put more than 8 of them on a line or
This is why you write special code to make the sprites flicker.
>mode which means extra programming gymnastics for game score counters and whatnot.
True it was more trying to force the hardware to get a game that kind of looks like your idea. For example if you want more enemies and have them all look totally differently .... That will not be possible ... compromises will be made !

>>8468067
>you cannot access the PPU registers or RAM when it's actively drawing the screen
Without some later advanced mappers there are no scanline IRQs which makes midline changes very tricky as you have only scanline poll counters. The PPU may also be temporarily disabled for midline changes as for example Kirby's Adventure does for the status bar.

NES still has better games

Do you genuinely believe I'm going to read all this shit?

>>8467652
itt anon brings us startling new information
all hardware has functional parameters you have to keep in mind when developing for it

>>8467765
Holy shit you mean the SNES is more powerful than the NES??????

NES is still better then the SNES

Sure, hardware has limitations but that still doesn't mean porting Street Fighter II to the ZX Spectrum was a good idea.

The Atari 2600, come on it didn't even have an actual frame buffer.

>>8467575
>>8467587
Is this English?

you could always end up like Sunsoft making incredibly short NES games because their giant DCPM samples ate like one quarter of the ROM

>>8468376
As much as I loved the SNES, even as a kid I enjoyed the gameplay of NES games more. More (relative) screen space with the sizing of the sprites played in to the NES's favor as well.

>>8468556
I never understood why Sunsoft never did the same shit on the SNES. They were one of the most impressive devs on the NES but everything 16-bit came off as extremely budget from them.

>>8468403
There was a market willing to buy.
Thats all that mattered.

it never made sense why Capcom don't put SF games on NES even the first one

I agree the limitations of your target platform define what you can and cannot do on it.

>>8468845
They did… something.

>>8468845
didn't think they could do it. any ZX Spectrum and whatnot ports don't matter because you could make a shitty computer "port" for like $100 (console games were expensive and had to pass a minimal Q/C level)

https://www.c64-wiki.com/wiki/Shamus

thing I always found cool about Shamus is that every version was basically a different game. now there were some other computer games like Boulder Dash that were largely the same on every system but every port of Shamus differs a lot.

Mother of God, Draygon looks absolutely terrifying on this image.

>>8468138
No fucking way you're 30 the way you post this shit. Go do your math homework, its due tomorrow faggot.

on NES there's not even a real way to do RNG, you just have to use a pseudo-random hash

>>8468349
>Do you genuinely believe I'm going to read all this shit?
People who reply in general?
Sure. Most seemingly did read the whole OP and it was trivial enough to not warrant comment on for length alone. And I imagine a lot of people didn't read the whole post or even the start of it, and also had nothing to comment.

You in particular?
No, nor did anyone ask or expect that of you.

Expressing you did not read something is a non-comment on whatever point OP is trying to get across. Someone who is illiterate would be able to comment the same (vocally).
Not trying to put you down, but your reply is not a rebuke to OP to anyone else commenting in this thread.

I mostly agree.
In almost every use case the SNES is the better console for games in general because the input, processor, storage, RAM, audio, and video are completely capable running any NES game with parity, even in the same or in higher fidelity.

Now audio is kind of a mixed bag: basically the SNES enabled new sounds, but not all good.
The SPC was a breakthrough in the diversity of sounds one could produce and the ability to compose multi-layered music without interfering with game audio. However, the SPC introduced new limitations as well (sample size, 32khz sample rate, Gaussian-filtered output) that makes it lower fidelity by default, though not in a way that most people notice if accounted for. So unless the composer and coders were extremely careful about working within those limitations, you can wind up with audio that sounds like it was compromised to play on the SNES.
So while you have your games like PLOK, Yoshi's Island, Square's RPGs etc. that could never have been made on the NES and sound fantastic, you have a bunch of stinker OSTs from less talented publishers that gives off the impression of it being shoehorned from a more traditional OST-making process. Shovelware suffers from it the most, but even something like Starfox has an OST that seems washed-out.
I would say the OSTs of NES titles, when present, were more consistent in quality. Games which didn't use expansion chips (2A03, with maybe the Famicom's extra channel in Japan) were constrained in what composers could feasibly produce. Games with audio expansion chips, however, could produce OSTs with parity in quality to the SNES in nearly all aspects except samples.

Also, as long as a game is conceptually possible on both the NES and the SNES, it's possible to make a better overall game on NES given enough space and polishing by the developers.
I'd argue SMB3 is an equal, if not better game than SMW just putting them side-by-side and ignoring the technical limitations.

>>8469621
And yeah that might sound like hair-splitting, but I have more favorite OSTs from the NES and the Genesis than the SNES, and that's a big factor in it. But many of the NES examples include expansion chips.

Now, if you're not dealing with in-game audio (or code to have it only temporarily take up a channel) and have the time, the 2A03 alone is pretty capable of expressing different music genres or making more organic-sounding music. Tim Follin is the infamous example, and these days chiptune artist can do even better with stuff like famitracker: https://bitpuritans.bandcamp.com/album/2a03-puritans

Nearly any genre of game can be done on 8-bit hardware with enough gumption. Metal Gear Solid for GBC proved that to me. And honestly, a lot of SNES games were just prettier versions of NES games. They didn't do anything special.

>>8469674
See OP.
SNES lets you not torture yourself with limitations.
>Nearly any genre of game can be done on 8-bit hardware with enough gumption
WRONG !
>Metal Gear Solid for GBC
NO !
There is Halo for the ATARI ! HALO FOR THE ATARI !

You think this is identical to the other halo games ?
https://youtu.be/1VKX_PZuy2I

NO the game play is totally different.

It seems a lot of 16-bit games suffered from excessively long levels that didn't have enough content. Probably because developers were so in awe of all this space and CPU power that they didn't quite know what to do with it.

>>8467575
>>8467587
>keep in mind
>Also keep in mind
>You must keep in mind
>You also must keep in mind

Find new a new phrase to use. Keep this in mind.

>>8469893
It's typical of a game designed around the 2600's constraints which in this case means extensive abuse of sprite multiplexing to get around the two player sprites limit.

>>8469448
Most retro machines have no actual way to do RNG (C64 does however).

>>8467575
What's like the top thirty best nes games? And from the "retro" perspective. Not a modern one where it includes games like little Sampson and other games that nobody heard of thirty years ? What's like a legit list ?

>>8471138
you can use the SID for that but on most stuff it's just a pseudo-random hash

>>8471148
obviously subjective, you can check the top-selling games list on Wikipedia if you want, but kids really ate up some not-that-great games like Ninja Turtles.

If you looked at a Famicom list it would be even more dismal, mostly just baseball games and Dragon Quest.

>>8469893
this was made by a Microsoft employee who used to code commercial Atari 2600 games back in the day

>inb4 someone does a de-make of Battle For Bikini Bottom on the NES

>>8472435
It would be a 2D side scroller most likely, it would be a little more like the GBA port and obviously nothing at all like the PS2. Then you'd be debating what ROM size/mapper to use and remembering that the game would have to be designed around those.

>>8472435
>inb4 someone does a de-make of Battle For Bikini Bottom on the NES
*ZX Spectrum

>>8467575
megaman is only a couple of years newer than pitfall but the difference in physics is huge. Atari 800 could probably do megaman and thats from 1979 or so.

David Crane and Gary Kitchen were some of the biggest Atari 2600 developers but they released absolutely terrible games on snes and genesis. So they would have spent most of their time trying to get sprites and colours on screen instead of tuning the physics. Barely any 2600 era programmers went on to make good games later apart from Mark Cerny, Jarvis and some others.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TF0SxaA1Io8&t=459s

as for pre nes systems, astrocade had some nice colours and atari 5200 and 7800 could do a huge number of colours on screen at once with severe limitations. IBM xt games by windmill were pretty good too.

>>8472602
The Atari 8-bits don't have the sprite capacity to handle Mega Man.

>>8472602
From what David Crane has said, the 2600 was the only system he was truly passionate about and anything he did later was just a paycheck his heart wasn't really in.

Jeff Minter also made nothing but garbage after the 8-bit era.

>>8472602
As we've seen, it also took the REU and its DMA controller to allow the C64 to do high speed 8-way scrolling.

bump

>>8467575
>Keep in mind that there is a reason Nintendo hard exists there where some real shit devs who farted out game after game (LJN) and the dumb kids keep buying and buying so they make money.
>Also keep in mind these games on the SNES and before where written in assembler and needed to trick the hardware into doing what you need if a bad mechanic was established by accident or only sounded good on paper..... FUCKEN LOL you are not changing this fagot !
>I think Playstation (I did not grow up with it) is the best while SNES has some real stinkers in it. Best example is Mega Man X VS Mega man 7, you can see that they needed to to make the game mechanics more smooth. However even mega man 7 has a rough feel to it wile playing even if contrasted to later mega man games.
>You must keep in mind that these early SNES era dev simply did not have the the power we have today in the machines. You can scoff at the game engine who is x1008 times inefficient then assembler games however the game engine lets you simply swap assets or make drastic changes to movement etc etc etc.
>Fun fact enter the gungeon is a 3D game ! Why ? Because its easier to deal with 3D logic in 3D space and to fake the 2D then to do this shit in 2D only.
>And look at the amount of enemies and bullets on screen it is impossible on SNES hardware.

The NES sucks ass and Nintendo was one of five companies that could actually get the goods out of it.
The others being Capcom, Konami, Tecmo, Taito, and Rare. Rare being the only western company that could work around that fucking piece of SHIT caught Nintendo's eye fast.
Literally
>hey wtf, these western fuckers are pretty good at making some decent shit on out POS hardware!
Nintendo didn't want any gaijin fly-by-nights upstaging them on the system. Being Yakuza and all.

>>8467575
>>8467587
Fine Speech

>all the years of putting down Euro computer games only to admit Nintendo really was pants all along

Whats the point here?
We already know most of the early nintendont assembly games were a clusterfuck spaghetti mess of programming. But the glitches and bugs were part of the charm back in the day. Kids would get excited if the game started stuttering "woah dude the game cant even handle all this action, radical!"
Kids would love surfing up and down the edge of the water to catch MissingNo.
Its not like the codebase needed to be maintained either, once it was shipped virtually no more versions were made. Sometimes they would pull out an "engine", in the sense of a few select techniques/algorithms and data tables.

>>8474110
Just because LJN made shitty games doesn't mean the ZX Spectrum was any good.

some bugs are fun and profitable like in Double Dragon how you can cheese your way out of fighting the level 2 boss

>>8473461
I was never all that impressed with Taito's NES efforts and even Konami and Capcom had some atrocities (mostly early in the NES's run)

boy these hot-takes are all over the place...

>>8467575
>written in assembler and needed to trick the hardware into doing what you need

huh? Trick the, what the hell are you on about? programming to hardware is about figuring how you can apply whats available. Some hardware features are targeted, but its up to the developer to find a gameplay reason to implement something. reading that as 'tricking the hardware' is a terrible hindsight take, and the demo-scene rebuts this.

>You can scoff at the game engine who is x1008 times inefficient then assembler games

oh we do. but thats not to say they aren't amazing game layer abstractions, but to say that they leave alot on the table in compromise just because there are so many orders of magnitude hardware power now to cover that inefficiency. If there wasn't, then it would be plain as day who had the skill, and who just through more processor power at their design problem.

>Because its easier to deal with 3D logic in 3D space and to fake the 2D then to do this shit in 2D only.
>because its easier

and here we are.

>>8467587
>See OP picture. Want this on the NES ?

i was always impressed at the giant static images Rare got out of the nes. Rc-pro Am, wiz & wor...