/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.9684450]

What is an example of Retro Games that really pushed the limits of the hardware it ran on?

[Anonymous No.9684453]

[Anonymous No.9684458]

Rare's SNES and 64 games are the closest thing to Naughty Dog's games for Nintendo I can think of.

[Anonymous No.9684461]

>>9684450
burning rangers

[Anonymous No.9684462]

>>9684450
Star Ocean for the Super Famicom
It surpassed the limits of the Sufami thanks to special chips inside the cartridge.

[Anonymous No.9684470]

>>9684450
Looking forward to your next video, Joe.

To answer your question: Kirby's Adventure.

[Anonymous No.9684486]

>>9684453
majora's mask exists in case you forgot? but if mario 64 hacking is any indication then nintendo did not do as great job of optimization

[Anonymous No.9684508]

>>9684486
>majora's mask exists in case you forgot?
And needed extra hardware

[Anonymous No.9684517]

>>9684462
>It surpassed the limits of the Sufami thanks to special chips inside the cartridge.

I mean, that describes a shitload of games.
Mega Man X2, Star Fox, Yoshi's Island, Kirby Superstar, Super Mario RPG, Stunt Race FX, etc.

Star Ocean was notable in that it has the largest ROM size of any Super Famicom release due to full English voice acting.
https://youtu.be/UvfNGKw3DE0?t=125
Although this footage is of a fan translation, the sound data for the voice acting is unaltered.

Star Ocean (along with Street Fighter Alpha 2) used a very unique addon chip called S-DD1, something that some flashcarts and many older emulators didn't support.
For that reason, there's a 2004 ROM hack that decompresses the Star Ocean ROM from 6MB all the way to 12MB (96 megabits), intended for flashcarts of the time.
https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/614/

[Anonymous No.9684519]

>>9684450
Rogue Leader immediately comes to mind, and speaking of Star Wars games, Jedi Knight was pretty mindblowing on the shitbox y2k business laptop I originally played it on.

[Anonymous No.9684524]

>>9684453
Its world is amazing and it pushed the N64 but I don't think it made use of everything the N64 was capable of. Conker's first level gives a better impression and picrel

[Anonymous No.9684526]

>>9684517
Shame none of that changes how butt ugly retro JRPGs are. They try way too hard to do a million details. The Earthbound and Zelda approach was so much better on SNES

[Anonymous No.9684530]

>>9684524
N64 could do some crazy character models, almost early PS2 tier

[Anonymous No.9684532]

>>9684508
Donkey Kong 64 also needed the RAM expansion, but that ended up being due to an incompetency in programming.
They couldn't figure out why the game would sometimes crash with the standard RAM, leading to the RAM expansion being a pack-in with the game.

Makes me wonder if someone could hack and refactor DK64 to work without the RAM expansion?
It doesn't look like there's been a decompilation effort for DK64.
https://github.com/n64decomp
Banjo Kazooie is at 98% though, that's neat.

[Anonymous No.9684537]

perfect dark pushed it so much the game could barely get above 15fps

[Anonymous No.9684545]

>>9684526
And you pull up an example of a pretty obscure low-profile title? That's hardly fair.

The later Square Enix SNES JRPGs are known for their effective detailing and strong visual design particularly Chrono Trigger.

[Anonymous No.9684656]

>>9684545
>And you pull up an example of a pretty obscure low-profile title? That's hardly fair.
No the very video you posted reminded me of it since it looks cluttered as fuck

[Anonymous No.9684690]

>>9684532
That’s not even fucking true you zoomer. Rare has clarified this multiple times.

[Anonymous No.9684719]

naughty dog and rareware games

[Anonymous No.9684730]

>>9684461
fucking unplayable framerate though

[Anonymous No.9684735]

>>9684461
Blows my mind Sega fanboys claim to this day the Saturn was more powerful than the PSX

[Anonymous No.9684767]

>>9684450
The first game pretty much did that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izxXGuVL21o
It's half an hour, but it's a very informative interview with one of Crash's creators about how they messed around with the ps1's performance to run the animations and models when the base devkit didn't allow for that.

[Anonymous No.9684781]

>>9684517
>Street Fighter Alpha 2
this god damn game plays and looks great! easily the most fun fighter on the snes. its bananas alpha 2 got such a good 16 bit port. it makes hyper fighting look like a nes game.

[Anonymous No.9685614]

>>9684767
nobody cares

[Anonymous No.9685691]

>>9684532
That's a myth that's since been deboonked. From what I know, it mostly uses the expansion pak for better lighting effects or some shit.

[Anonymous No.9685707]

>>9684450
If we don't count mapper chips, the first Super Mario Bros. pretty much pushed the limit of what the base NES hardware could do. Counting the mapper chips, there's a good number of candidates. Kirby's Adventure looks amazing, though unfortunately it also comes with a ton of slowdown. Recca has some impressive effects of its own and runs quite smoothly on the whole. And Battletoads is awesome as well.

[Anonymous No.9685757]

Just discovered Front Mission: GunHazard. Very nice 2d action game that looks great

[Anonymous No.9685763]

This game looks close to a Saturn game.

[Anonymous No.9685796]

>>9685691
Apparently so, I probably first learned of it around 2013 from Nintendo Life.

https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2013/05/donkey_kong_64_required_expansion_pak_to_prevent_game_breaking_bug

Which was later debunked.
https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2019/11/feature_donkey_kong_64_devs_on_bugs_boxing_and_20_years_of_the_dk_rap

>"There was a game-breaking bug right at the end of development that we were struggling with," he clarifies, "but the Expansion Pak wasn’t introduced to deal with this and wasn’t the solution to the problem. My memory is that, like all consoles, the hardware is constantly revised over its lifetime to take advantage of ongoing improvements in technology and manufacture methods to essentially make the manufacture more cost effective and eventually profitable. I think there we’re something like 3 different revisions of the internal hardware by this point and the bug was unique to only one of these versions. We did eventually find it and fix it, but very late in the day."

[Anonymous No.9686252]

battletoads on NES
especially the rotating tower effect here

[Anonymous No.9686353]

the metropolis level from ratchet and clank 1 still impresses the hell out of me. the giant scale, plus the high speed traffic, plus destructibles, plus the enemies with projectiles, plus a train segment... it all somehow ran at a perfectly locked 60 fps on a ps2.

[Anonymous No.9686357]

another view

[Anonymous No.9686365]

>>9684486
>but if mario 64 hacking is any indication then nintendo did not do as great job of optimization
No shit. Look at most releases within the first year compared to their final years. Look at Romancing SaGa 1 versus Romancing SaGa 3, or The Revenge of Shinobi versus Shinobi Return of the Ninja Master.

[Anonymous No.9686370]

>>9684450
It has to be Gran Turismo

I mean, what the fuck. That was black magic.

[Anonymous No.9686381]

Fags pointing out 20 fps games but also say cyberpunk sucks on the xbone

Actually polished games that push hardware ?

Garou

[Anonymous No.9686385]

Alpha 3 Saturn is a masterclass

[Anonymous No.9686429]

>>9684767
It was in fact a guy working for Sony that told Naughty Dog about that. Forgot what he is called.

[Anonymous No.9686471]

>>9684486
>>9684508
Just because Majora's Mask dips to negative frame rate when a bomb goes off doesn't mean it's pushing the hardware to the limit.

[Anonymous No.9687120]

>>9686357
insomniac were fucking wizards back then, in both the PS1 and PS2 eras

[Anonymous No.9687150]

In Final Fantasy 7, a player character is around 900 tris
In Final Fantasy 9, a player character is around 3,000 tris
FF9 does this while adding an extra player character to battles. This isn't even getting into monsters, who received the same 3x to 4x detail bump.
It's crazy to think about how much better Square got at programming on the exact same hardware in just three years.

[Anonymous No.9687184]

>Real-time lighting
>Dynamic shadows
>Voice acting with mouth animations
>Individual finger animations
>Near unlimited draw distance, no fog
If someone didn't know any better, you could probably convince them Conker was a Dreamcast game.

[Anonymous No.9687216]

>>9687150

they don't look like 3000 tris

it's mostly just good texture work and better aesthetic modeling sense

[Anonymous No.9687231]

>>9687150
>In Final Fantasy 9, a player character is around 3,000 tris
No way in hell. Tekken 3 characters are 1500 tris and they look better.

[Anonymous No.9687242]

>>9687216
Well, they are 3,000+ tris.
Zidane's model is 3,388 tris.
Freya is 2,500 tris
Garnet is 3,600 tris
Vivi is one of the simplest characters at 2,100 tris.

>>9687231
Tekken 3 is around 2,000+ tris.
Also, Tekken 3 runs at a stable 60fps. FF9 runs at 20fps with dips.

[Anonymous No.9687247]

>the hardware on which it ran

[Anonymous No.9687248]

>>9687242
So you're talking about the pre-rendered cutscenes and not in-game models.

[Anonymous No.9687261]

>>9684450
Here's a repost from the archive. Apart from correcting a couple of typos, I kept it intact.
The original is here (https://desuarchive.org/vr/thread/7876640/#q7876730):

Some Impressive SNES games that didn't use any enhancement chips.
Keep in mind that they had different PCB types.

Goemon 4
Hamelin No Violin
Umihara Kawase
Tactics Ogre (Many extremely well animated sprites on the screen)
Energy Breaker
Front Mission
Front Mission Gun Hazard
Metal Warriors (Destructible environment)
Assault Suits Valken
Chaos Seed
Seiken Densetsu 3
Terranigma
Tales of Phantasia
Wonder Project J
The SNES version of Maui Mallard (Worse gameplay than in the other versions, but much more impressive lighting and graphical details)
Donkey Kong Country 2&3 (Pseudo-3d effects in some stages)
Megaman 7 + Rockman & Forte (Big detailed sprite animations)
Equinox
Ace Striker
NBA Give 'n Go

Correct me if I'm wrong.

[Anonymous No.9687268]

>>9684450
Omega Boost for the PSX

[Anonymous No.9687269]

>>9687242
>Tekken 3 is around 2,000+ tris.
For this to be true it should run at 240,000 polygons per second. On ps1 this is only possible with untextured polygons which Tekken 3 uses but only occasionally.

[Anonymous No.9687276]

Tobal 2 looks like a 6th gen title
https://youtu.be/8ePJmr-COEQ

[Anonymous No.9687325]

spyro on ps1 was famous for its fogless draw distances

[Anonymous No.9687339]

>>9684735
Perhaps for 2D games. I don't think anyone would contest 3D games being better on the PlayStation.

[Anonymous No.9687340]

Quake

Hunter

[Anonymous No.9687342]

>>9684461
Looks freaking cool. I'm not too much in the chara design but it might be fun.

[Anonymous No.9687354]

>>9684526
>They try way too hard
>The Earthbound ... approach was so much better on SNES
Earthbound doesn't try at all and as a result it looks and sounds like utter shit. It's like a bad joke compared to anything before or after it on the same system.

[Anonymous No.9687449]

Metroid Prime.... get it? GUFFAW

[Anonymous No.9687464]

>>9685757
>Gunhazard
Absolute beast of a game. I would advise playing with a spoiler free guide so you don't miss some of the best companions and bits of story

[Anonymous No.9687935]

On PC it was 3dfx that pushed the limits of the hardware. Some P100 with Voodoo was faster (and graphics was better) than P200MMX with no Voodoo.

[Anonymous No.9687950]

>>9687354
lol

[Anonymous No.9688318]

>>9687242
Good lord the absolute inefficiency of those polygon layouts. No wonder it doesn't look detailed.

[Anonymous No.9688427]

>>9688318
can you expand on this, what should it look like?

[Anonymous No.9688440]

PC Engine
>Hucard: bomberman 94 or street fighter ii CE (hucards were limited by size unfortunately, otherwise the most impressive 4 megabit game is air zonk)
>Super CD: Legend of Xanadu (the sidescrolling levels and bosses are fucking mindblowing, though the sequel looks better overall)
>Arcade CD: Fatal Fury Special (the snes version was a whopping 32 megabits and the pce port shits all over it, except for a couple backgrounds)

[Anonymous No.9688596]

>>9686252
Rare was all about doing things with the NES that should have been impossible.

[Anonymous No.9688605]

>>9687242
>belts above the shoulder

Fuck you for making me realize this

[Anonymous No.9688817]

[Anonymous No.9688905]

>>9684450
Soul Reaver. Real-time warping geometry like that looked fucking sick.

[Anonymous No.9688952]

>>9684453
Fuck no not even MM

Conkers bad furday pushed the N64 to its limits and it also used the largest N64 cart.
>>9684462
nes/snes stuff is cheating tho. Those chips like shit the FX alone was like what 2-3 times more powerful than a snes.

[Anonymous No.9688969]

This game was absolutely insane for the time. How detailed the world was, how everyone was voiced, the hundreds of unique characters, the size of the city.

[Anonymous No.9688970]

>>9688969
should have done this but in a cyberpunk futuristic setting with white people. nobody wants to play as a beardless asian manlet, that was the game's downfall.

[Anonymous No.9688973]

>>9688970
You mean the nomad soul? It was a decent game but the graphics were ugly compared to shenmue

[Anonymous No.9688974]

>>9688973
no i mean they shouldn't have made this game

[Anonymous No.9688976]

>>9688974
you described the nomad soul

[Anonymous No.9688983]

>>9688976
bro i don't even know what you're referencing, all i'm saying is shenmue would've been more popular if the game didn't revolve around an asian guy and muh dishonorabru

[Anonymous No.9688985]

>>9688983
Just play the nomad soul

[Anonymous No.9688986]

>>9688985
nah

[Anonymous No.9688987]

>>9688986
fag

[Anonymous No.9688991]

>>9687150
Anon I don't think you know what a 3000 tri player model looks like. If you read it from somewhere, it probably means the menu or model viewer LOD is 3000 tris. A PS1's polygon budget, assuming it runs at 30 fps and the tris are textured, will land you around a scene budget of 3000 so that kind of makes sense. A 3000 tri player model is actually PS2 territory.

[Anonymous No.9688995]

>>9688987
hey, here's an idea: go floig yourself

[Anonymous No.9688997]

>>9684461
Fuck now it's in my head

[Anonymous No.9689102]

The japanese Daytona CCE on Saturn is pretty nice. Looks like double the detail of the original and runs at a pretty solid 30 fps most of the time. I'd even say the graphics are better than most n64 racing games.

>>9686252
Looks and sounds amazing, genesis, snes and arcade versions are real odd to look at since they are remakes.

[Anonymous No.9689126]

>>9684735

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpcjkDDLoXM

[Anonymous No.9689129]

>>9685707

For my money it's gotta be Little Samson, Gimmick!, LaGrange Point or Sweet Home

[Anonymous No.9689148]

Micky Mania on the Genesis
>>9685707
Crisis Force, I don't know how Konami got that game to work on the NES.

[Anonymous No.9689190]

>>9684461
I played it to completion.
This is the best the Saturn can do, which is pretty pathetic.

[Anonymous No.9689197]

>>9689126
>barely any entities
>only 1-3 enemies on screen at a time
>retard tier animations
>runs at 3-5 fps
Quake 2 on both PS1 and N64 take a hot dump on this trash, let alone shit like Perfect Dark

[Anonymous No.9689216]

>>9689197

The framerate is better than PS1 Quake 2, which is all indoors or very modest outdoor settings. Look how far the draw distance is. The enemy frequency is the same as it was in actual Unreal. It also shows how the VDP planes can be used to create skyboxes

[Anonymous No.9689289]

>>9689197
Literally better performance than what pc gamers would have at the time. Crazy how underrated Saturns power is

[Anonymous No.9689567]

>>9687248
wrong

[Anonymous No.9689579]

>>9685796
chris seavor said that in a conkers bad fur day commentary and everyone took it as fact

[Anonymous No.9689582]

>>9686353
Something about this exact era of gaming is so damn comfy. The fun music, the playful UI, the quirky yet fascinating art direction, the unique weapons. Late enough in time to have some believable 3d at good framrate, but early enough that games were willing to be fun instead of cinematic experiences. We're so lucky to have experienced this kind of media in its day and fellow anons to continue celebrating it with now

[Anonymous No.9690004]

Zone of the Enders 2 is PS2 taken to its peak in visual design, game design and graphical prowess. It is *the* game to show what that console could do.
If more games had tried as hard maybe it would be remember as more than just shovelware: the console.

[Anonymous No.9690178]

[Anonymous No.9690308]

>>9690004
PS2 had tons of great games. The Wii is the shovelware console.

[Anonymous No.9690428]

>>9689582
The early half of 6th gen will probably always be my favorite. It hit at the sweet spot age of 10 for me, which is a big part of it, but the reasons you described are what really made it stick, I think. Ratchet is actually a good example of why, in my mind: it looks and feels like a big budget animated adventure, but not as sickly cinematic like a Pixar movie as the later games.
I love the 3rd-5th too, but the 6th is really special to me.

[Anonymous No.9690619]

>>9688991
>A PS1's polygon budget, assuming it runs at 30 fps and the tris are textured, will land you around a scene budget of 3000
It's 3000 textured tris at 60 fps, not 30.

[Anonymous No.9690815]

>>9685614
yet you cared enough to reply

[Anonymous No.9691065]

>>9687242
dude that ain't a PS1 model that's from the remaster

[Anonymous No.9691574]

>>9687242
This isn't the PS1 model, if that mesh and horribly AI upscaled texture isn't obvious enough

[Anonymous No.9691658]

>>9684486
Mario 64 and OOT are famous for being extremely unoptimized games because Nintendo couldn't figure out the foreign-made hardware and english-only documentation, that said they did amazing shit with what they could hash out

[Anonymous No.9691853]

MD
>Alien Soldier
>Panorama Cotton
>Ranger X

[Anonymous No.9691860]

PSX
>Vagrant Story
>Sheep Raider
>Silent Hill

[Anonymous No.9691875]

>>9688318
>t. never rigged a character
If it wasn't for those "inefficiencies" you wouldn't be able to animate this. Characters aren't like static objects that you can just reduce to an absolute minimum polygon count.

[Anonymous No.9692245]

>>9684735
and it is retard, on paper and on practice, just look at the unreal demo

[Anonymous No.9692252]

>>9689190
>This is the best the Saturn can do,
not really, burning rangers is a meme, theres other games that pushed the saturn to the limit

[Anonymous No.9692268]

jurassic park on genesis has some cool looking sequences

[Anonymous No.9692395]

>>9684450
Shit on the character models all you want they look bad only because Monolith never bothered hiring a lead character designer artist for the job, but everything else from the big maps and that draw distances on what basically is a slightly buffed GameCube is mind blowing.

[Anonymous No.9692443]

>>9692395

[Anonymous No.9692447]

>>9692443

[Anonymous No.9692489]

>>9684450
Nice try Joe from Game sack. Do your own research. Also get another partner like Dave to join you who can even out your (well intentioned) autismo.

But you doing good solo.