Messages

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Arcade Card - Game enhancement?]

If I remember right, for Vasteel 2 it adds ADPCM sound fx...I wonder how that worked, maybe the 64k ADPCM memory was used for code/graphics, so when the ACD was used the 64k was freed up to add cool ADPCM sndfx,

When ever talk of bi compatable games come up, im always made sad that the fact Macross 2036 is only a 64k regular cd game, even with a puny 64k memory, its able to put out levels with 3 or 4 distinct BGs, 4 huge beautifully animated bosses, player ship with 2 distinctive sprites each one very well animated, a large number of distinct and impressive ADPCM sndfx, and ingame cutscenes, where the cartoon is pasted on top of the action.....that's only one meg of memory, think if you had 5 megs of fu##ing memory, kinda gets me thinking, I cant think of a single optimized cdrom side scrolling action game, like rondo of blood,(2 load times per level) so I wonder what a optimized cdrom rondo of blood would be like.

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Most disappointing games you really wanted... then hated.]

I agree with The Old Rover about the control in Axe 1, with better control it could have been on the same level as Ninja Spirit and Axe 2, oh, and better character art would have gone a long way in helping it as well. the characters are not colored or shaded right, they or most of them seem very flat, just compare them to Axe 2 to see what I mean.

I wanted early CD games to have awesome in game aesthetics, the 1st two games I got were Valis 2 and Ys 1 & 2, so I was really disappointed in early CD games...in fact, in my little brain, because of that, I thought it was impossible for CD games to have good graphics, something about those flat disk made it impossible for programmers to do so:-)....the next CD game I bought was Rayxanber 2 and thought it was a really nice looking game, so my faith was restored.

[Localizations, Games, Apps, Docs / Re: SGX shmup alpha 2]

Looking really nice!!

[Off-Topic / The “What-Did-You-Buy-Today?” Thread]

Too, too cute

A new Turbo Express approaches from the east!!

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Rondo of Blood Thread]

oops, forgot to post the sheets,

here is some color cycling comparison, the pic below is from Dracxx, it cycles through 15 unique colors, in comparison, rondo cycles through 125 colors, by the way, I don't count those as frames other things in rondo I don't count is the begening of each stage has a title different for richter and Maria, they have a cool warping or melting effect, also when you defeat a boss, his life bar melts, two unique frames for that...I don't count a lot of animation that's in rondo, the game is just loaded with crap, I also added the rondo death color cycling.

Just to point out, the GNG sprite sheet of animation/fx is only about 65 percent done...rondo is about 90 percent done, the enemy flame fx has three other palettes, one green and two purples there are actually subtle differences between them, so that right there is 90 more frames, mostly palettes swaps though, Demons Crest is about 100 percent complete.



Dracula xx 15 unique colors



rondo about 125 unique colors...just Death I got lazy and didn't cut the other frames out.

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Rondo of Blood Thread]

In all honesty though, Awack, any other PCE sprite rips? The rips are really well done. Amount of frames does't bother me, I just want to see the beautiful sprite work.

Sorry, I lost most of them when my comp crashed.


By the way, if you want to know what I think the best is when it comes to cartridge games as far as hand drawn fx go, its Demons Crest huge number of frames, great colors etc.. Not in the same league as Rondo, but still  beautiful. 

Demons Crest


One of the other best is GNG for the super grafx and super GNG for the snes.

GNG supergrafx




here is some color cycling comparison, the pic below is from Dracxx, it cycles through 15 unique colors, in comparison, rondo cycles through 125 colors, by the way, I don't count those as frames other things in rondo I don't count is the begening of each stage has a title different for richter and Maria, they melt away, also when you defeat a boss, his life bar melts, two unique frames for that...I don't count a lot of animation that's in rondo, the game is just loaded with crap, by the way, the rondo version of this part of the game is somewhere in this thread.

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Why do HuCards have low Meg counts?]

In all honesty, Parodius should have been a Super CD. As an 8 meg, it's impressive. But apart from a fantastic special stage, pales in comparison to the SNES version in all aspects.

The pce port has much better animation, the scaling fx (frames) on each of the playable characters in the pce game, is far better, the huge walking women in stage 2 has more frames of animation, the rotation of the smaller enemies are once again better(more frames) the pig enemies butts jiggle in the pce port, the large female boss who blows bubbles also has better animation,and it goes on and on and on. the first level is far better looking in the snes port, but the 2nd level is a bit better looking in the pcengine game, I ask myself,  which is the better game, the one with the extra stages  or the one with better animation, less slowdown, oh and the better opening cutscene:), I don't know.... I remember that shmups.com and most of the people who were on the forums thought more highly of the pc engine game, but again I don't know.

BlackTiger

It's a cool game, but much better as a GT title than yet another SCD shooter. We already have Gradius II.

I just did a comparison of between Gradius 2 pce and Gradius 3 for the snes...and let me tell you, Gradius 2 for the pce is a fantastic game, its a far better port of gradius 2 than the snes port is of Gradius 3.

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Why do HuCards have low Meg counts?]

Yeah, its a shame that almost every hucard game is 2, 3 or 4 megs...here are some of the larger games.

Bonk 3(8megs)
Raiden(6megs) i think.
Parodius(8megs)
Bomberman 94(8megs)
Streetfighter 2 (20megs)
i believe there is at least one 8meg sports game, and of course Aldyness, GNG, and 1941 were all 8megs...which in my opinion counts, its still the pc engine, how do i know this because it says it right there on the console, it can play all standard games and use the add ons and such, it just has extra chips, its a pcengine just as much as star fox is a snes game.

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Thoughts on Mad Stalker]

The game isn't as deep as say Ranger x or Cybernator, but when you look at those huge sprites moving that fast and big beautifully animated explosions, plus awesome, awesome sound fx, i think its one of the coolest robot/mech games ever, cool as hell.

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: How did you find out about the Turbo Grafx 16 PC Engine.]

I lived in Durham NC during the 16bit era, I'm pretty sure it was a commercial that brought the turbo grafx 16 to my attention, i of course bought it that Christmas, i should point out that i had already knew about and bought the sega genesis a whole year prior, i remember seeing commercials all the time for the Genesis, but nothing for the turbo, that system really had no chance of succeeding in the US,  it was doomed from the beginning.

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Rondo of Blood Thread]

This is a good point. Look at Earthworm Jim. It's much more well animated than Rondo, but plays rather sloppier. Animation frames don't make a game.

In my opinion, more frames can make for a better game, rondo for example...first of all I have to point out that rondo has thousands more frames of animation, also individual enemies have more frames, EWJ has between 20 and 40 frames per boss, rondo has between 70 and 240 frames per boss, some of those are flips or color swapping though.... what EWJ and many other cartoony type platformers do is have only one move per enemy, they put all the frames in that one move, where is in rondo there can be three, four, five or so moves...this can but not always make for a more fun game, a few bosses from each game below to show what I mean.

EWJ


EWJ


EWJ


EWJ


EWJ



the rondo sheets are so big that you have to scroll over to the right.


RONDO DRACULA



RONDO MINATOUR


RONDO DEATH




RONDO SHAFT


RONDO WYVERN


RONDO WAREWOLF


RONDO DULAHAN





non boss enemy from rondo, this is what I mean, he jumps out of window, walks, runs, jumps, kicks, flips, sword attack, has death animation, and two different sparks from sword attack depending on where you face him, i realize im becoming more and more of a dip shit fanboy every day


RONDO



I completely agree about Axe 2, could you imagine a super cd Axe 3.

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Rondo of Blood Thread]

Interesting. Bonknuts is saying that Rondo of Blood would be roughly the same size as SNES Dracula X, minus the cinemas, but that doesn't make any sense considering how many more stages, bosses, frames of animation, sound fx, etc. that Rondo has. Have you looked at SNES Dracula X and compared the frames of animation between the two?

Yes ive compared dracxx too rondo, look at the pic below, its of rondo sprites.




Dracula xx and rondo both use sprite flipping and palette cycling/swapping, of course rondo uses it more partly because many time more frames of animation to begin with, this stuff takes a lot less memory than actual frames, on the flip side take a look at the some of the biggest sprites in the game like rock golem, the big purple skull, bone golem boss, the horses, the giant flower, the painting, the cross, the dragon, the dead wyvern(dragon), Frankenstein, the two large skull attacks, the phenox, the green armor knight with ball and chain and the cat item crash, basically most of the largest sprites were done away with completely, and one of the bosses that was changed from the dragon to the three headed panther is much smaller than the rondo counter part, on top of that the dragon from rondo has almost two and a half more frames of real animation, plus the other large bosses in Draculaxx like the serpant boss and demon form Dracula are a bit smaller, plus, the big sprites that were kept far have far fewer frames of animation like the bull.

I just added up what Bonknuts is saying, dracxx memory includes music, soundfx, cutscenes, and a few other things, I think what he got from rondo Is just code and graphics, in theory, if  all of the adpcm memory was used each load in rondo that would be eleven and a half megs, taking all that into account, it would seem that rondo is the largest action game(shmups, platform shooters, hack n slash type games) released on the three major 16bit consoles

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Rondo of Blood Thread]

I don't know why rondo stands out so much from other action games, heres an interesting fact.
take SCIV, bloodlines, Actraiser, Actraiser 2, the adventures of batman and robin for the genesis, and lightning force,  all of those combined, you just about equal rondo in sprite frames, most games use sprite flipping or color swaping for animation, rondo uses more but that's because it uses more of everything, but you have to take into consideration that the sprites in rondo are much larger than the other games.

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Rondo of Blood Thread]

Most games start slowly.  SCIV and RoB aren't too different in that regard, and I wouldn't say that you need to get past the first three or four levels before things pick up in SCIV, no

I don't know too many people who would agree that they start out about the same, you said that you probably agree that rondo has better AI, in SCIV there is hardly ever more than a couple of enemies on screen with enemies that just walk back and forth combined with the long multi directional whip, makes disposing of them, way too easy, like the first boss(skeleton horse and rider) all you have to do is stand in one place and whip and in no time hes dead, Medusa is even worse. now take rondo, the green skeleton swordsman has a good level of AI, he will actually react to your moves such as by sliding under your whip, the blue knight in front of the bridge seems to pose more of a challenge to players than the first few bosses in SCIV,

This is before the more difficult platforming shows up later in the game, these are some reasons why myself and others make that statement about the first few levels.

but SNES Dracula X does show visual and speed improvements, at least.

Yes, it does show an improvement over SCIV like you say, but compared to rondo, its a different story, take the fight against death, there is half the amount of blood from death when hit onscreen , there is also half the number of cycles flying onscreen at  as well, at the same time every thing moves slower like death richter, they up the difficulty in Drac xx by shrinking the platform your fighting on and taking damage when ever you touch death.

The multi-direction whip is far more important, useful, and powerful than any of that stuff you listed that RoB has.  It's not that close (Maria + red birds is good, as long as your special weapon stock holds up, but still the multi-directional whip has fewer limitations.).  Those other moves in RoB are nice to have, though, for sure.  They do help make the game better.

In my opinion, the multi directional whip combined with the type of opposition you face makes for very unbalanced gameplay.

Game on CD that has a lot more space to put a lot more animation in the game than any cartridge game could match uses that space well.  News at 11.  No, this isn't any kind of argument against SCIV.  If anything it's a good one the other way, showing how much they did with the small space of that cartridge!

I completely agree, I don't use SCIV for comparison because its an early game and the fore sucks, I do it because I already have it done up for showing, for an 8 meg game, its pretty amazing, like they used some kind of awesome compression scheme.


Love your sprite rip work, from Bonknuts.

 Thank you so much, knowing all the details in a game makes me appreciate the game even more.

awack, I would be interested if you have more PCE sprite rips. I wonder what other games are as technically good as Rondo, but behind the scenes. HuCard rips of beautiful games like New Adventure Island and Twinbee, would be interesting too!

No other action game is even close to Rondo, the second most beautiful game when it comes to those type of sprites is Cotton for the PCE, and of course the snes cotton, which uses the same type of special fx doesn't even come close, ill post some comparison shots, believe it or not one of the best in my opinion is Demons crest for the snes, the Genesis can put a lot of stuff on screen at once (great CPU) it has one major problem in its low number of sub palettes, take rondo for example, a boss can be shooting a projectile at you, you can be pulling off a item crash, plus things bursting into flames, your putting an extra 20 to 40 colors onscreen at once, so things will lose a lot of flash due to that.

pce cotton


snes cotton,



Some more things about Rondo, it doesn't have a handful or a few dozen of background animations, it has hundreds, it doesn't have dozens of unique sound fx, it has hundreds, and of course it doesn't have hundreds of sprite frames, it has thousands.

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Rondo of Blood Thread]

Dracula xx, is around 16 or so megs, which is just about as big as action type games(shooters and hack n slash etc) got on the snes back then a side scrolling action rpg like super Metroid was, if im not mistaken 20 to 24 megs, not sure though,  a few late platformers were around 20 too 24 megs too I think.

Legendary Axe 1 and 2 both have 2 megs each, which is pretty amazing in my opinion, I always wondered what a 8 or 16 meg castlevania  would look and sound like on a hucard going by Axe 2.

Lastly, keep in mind that Slogra and Gaibon were carried over to SOTN as well

They were redrawn for SOTN, Rondo of blood sprites and special fx were not changed other than maybe a lighter or darker color palette, Th GBA was not able to reproduce the animated fx from Rondo, they tried but they look aweful, most of the Nintendo DS use sprites and special fx from Rondo, again unchanged, castlevania harmony of despair for the xbox 360 also rondo sprites, and also at least one cell phone game, Rondos quality is truly amazing.

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Rondo of Blood Thread]

In some ways SCIV is a study in how not to design a game, even people who call it their favorite game of all time tell you that you just have to get past the first  three or four levels and then things pick up, for the most part you will only have around 2 or 3 enemies on screen at once, you have far more on screen in Rondo of course, the main way you or at least most people die in SCIV from what Ive seen is from disappearing blocks and such, in Rondo its doing battle with enemies, enemy AI seems to be far superior In Rondo as well, SCIV gives you multi direction whip...in comparison Rondo gives you the ability to jump on and OFF stairs, multiple characters, different paths to choose, item crash, back flip, slide, tumble, double jump, money actually has a purpose, able to pick your secondary weapon back up, a lot of people might not know but if you keep your finger on the jump button your able to control your jump, and the turtle crash, your able to control where goes (up or down) with the direction pad.

Like I was saying before, here are some of the fx/animations that are still being used today, no other snes or genesis game can claim this. This is where Rondo of blood is the best of its generation.









here are all of the similar SCIV fx/animation for comparison..cant capture transparencies

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Rondo of Blood Thread]

Hardware scaling like in snes games would have  ruined rondo of blood, a lot of  snes scaling looks like pixilated pieces of paper coming closer or moving away from the screen there is no change in color or detail and it gets more and more pixilated as it draws closer to the screen, if you look at sapphire the game was able to redraw each frame and recolor as an object got closer to the screen, so aesthetically it looks much better than most snes type scaling, though not as smooth of course.

here are some scaling, rotation and spinning that's found in rondo, most of this stuff was dropped all together in Dracula xx, or downgraded with less frames due to not enough memory, if you look at the cyths with16 frames those are all unique frames which is why it looks so good in game.

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Rondo of Blood Thread]

Back in 1999 I had a lot of what many would consider the best games for the Genesis and SNES, a few hucards and cd some imports for the pcengine, then one day that year I saw one of my friends playing SOTN, I said to myself holy doodoo, the special fx were amazing....I started collecting games again, Gensis, SNES and pcengine games,  obviously nothing had the flair of SOTN, then I soon found out about Rondo, I thought to myself that its not going to have any of that flair or flash of SOTN, because no snes, pce or genesis game had, had
 those kinda animated fx, boy, was I wrong, I couldn't believe it, it had retained dozens of animated special fx.

Then I learned about the snes port and thought, well lets see how this stuff turned out on that system, and of course it was neutered, the snes just couldn't reproduce those animations, nor could the GBA, it wouldn't be until the Nintendo DS that we would see the same quality of animation,.

Its pretty close to being an objective fact that Rondo has the best animated fx between the three major 16bit systems, (enemy burst into flame fx, dracs orb attack, dracs fire attack, shafts lightning,etc, etc, etc) I believe this because other systems(gen,snes) tried and failed at trying to reproduce these fx(at least the snes) and most importantly, what other game has its special fx animations still being used pixel for pixel in games to this day.

So if some one ask you what your favorite system is and you say the pcengine, and they ask what so great about the pcengine, tell them that it produced the best special fx of its generation.

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Macross 2036 (PCE CD) vs. Macross Scramble Valkyrie (SNES)]

Two awesome games, I agree with Fragmare, visually I find them pretty close, player, enemies and bosses, look a lot better in 2036 to me, level three with its great line scrolling, four layer overlapping parallax scrolling and reflections in the ice  is just awesome. Really nice cutscenes, 2036 also in my opinion has much better music and soundfx, and that's saying a lot because SV has some of the best sound Ive ever heard in a shooter....SV on the other hand has higher color counts and makes really good use of rotation, scaling and transparencies and this isn't always the case but SV does a good job at incorporating these fx into the visuals.

Macross 2036 Bosses


Macross SV Bosses


Player Macross 2036


Player Macross SV


enemies SV                                          enemies 2036




a few more screens of 2036




Macross 2036 has the missile salvo and as far as I know, Sv doesn't, that in it self makes 2036 the better Macross game,

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Aldynes (SGX) vs. R-Type III (SNES) vs. Lightening Force/TFIV (Genesis)]

I don't like Rtype 3 as muc as macros or axelay but I thought it was pretty impressive, its a 1993 release and is 12 megs making it the largest non cutemup shooter on the syste I believe, not sure about that, in one of the last levels it has some cool morphing on some of the enemies and a warping fx on some of the bosses like in Nexzer.

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: SideArms vs Spriggan Mark 2]

Spriggan 2 is an amazing 16bit shooter, the SCD format is put to good use, the animation on some enemies and bosses is just fantastic, some standard enemies will rotate 360 degrees as it tracks you, then it will shed its outer skin or transform, on top of that it has an entirely different skin when destroyed, even though the duo does not have hardware rotation some of the enemies and bosses have beautiful rotation on arms and or legs, arguably the best production or set pieces for any shmup on the three 16bit consoles, rain pouring as giant lasers from outer space destroy the city and any enemy or friendly ship that gets in its away, combined with the beautiful animated enemies already mentioned, awesome particle explosions( explosions are different depending on the atmosphere) as night turns to day you will see the city in ruins.

Other pieces have huge rockets (three overlapping layers) forcing you upwards as the level comes to an end, This game has the best sense of depth I have ever seen in a 16bit game, the level with the large craters....when you reach the end boss the background speeds up, the speed, the smoothness and the way everything is drawn, from large to small, give the most amazing sense speed and depth Ive seen, infact other than rondo of blood, the only game (on snes genesis or duo) that impresses my friends and brother is that particular part of that game, its kinda funny when you think about it, the system that gets bashed the most for its crappy parallax scrolling, has one of the most impressive use of it.

Its only weak point is that it only has one load time per level, the animation and attention to detail could have been even more awesome, the extra memory probably would have went to more diverse backgrounds (more unique tiles) like winds of thunder. This game reminds me a lot of Macross 2036 even though you get 2 load times per level on Macross it doesn't have the animation/detail of spriggan, its only a CDrom2  game.

Any way, its one of ten games that make the Duo my favorite system of all time, followed closely by the genesis and super nes.

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: HuCard vs. CD-ROM² (CD, SCD, ACD)]

The super air zonk(scd) vs air zonk(hucard) is a perfect example of the superiority of the super cd format, take the 1st level, super air zonk has far more variety in Background tiles and sprite frames, air zonk sprites for the 1st level are pretty much un animated were in super air zonk they are well animated...but only one or two places have parallax scrolling and is considered not as fun as the original zonk, goes to show that the superior format isn't always the better game, of course in theory, you could make a hu card big enough to fit super air zonk in it and that is the main strength of cd technology, cheap memory.

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: HuCard vs. CD-ROM² (CD, SCD, ACD)]

No doubt, CDROM2, like has been mentioned, in the real world your not going to get games like Winds of Thunder or Dracula X on cards or cartridges, there is just too much content/variation within each level(Dracula X, Winds of thunder) and each boss fight(Dracula X)..Hell, the pathetic half a meg CDrom2 produced some of the best games of the entire 16bit generation like Spriggan, arguably the best horizontal shooter of that time and there really isn't much of an argument against it.

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Bloody Wolf vs. M.E.R.C.S. - Which is better?]

I cant decide so just to close so  im just going to pick Red Alert arguably the best over head military action game on the three 16bit systems.

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: New Compile Combat! Blazing Lazers/Gunhed vs. Space Megaforce/Super Aleste]

Its been so long since I played either im not going to vote but I rmember them both having really good sound overall, gameplay can get kinda boring in places and both are average in the graphics department, though megaforce does have some cool fx.

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: 3-way battle! Spriggan vs. M.U.S.H.A. vs. Robo Aleste]

Sorry about the late response but yeah, Necromancer got it, 5 megs per level is of course Theoretical, not all games necessarily takes full advantage of whats available.

A good example is the boss gauntlet/shaft fight in rondo, the 2 loads you have during that one level gives you 5 beautifully  animated bosses as well as a very large number of adpcm sound fx, shaft says each attack and he says something different for each attack, along with the other sound fx that happen during his fight then add to that the sound fx for medusa, Frankenstein the bat and the mummy .....rondo is loaded with an astonishing amount of unique sndfx, PCM and ADPCM.

It should be pointed out that most games are not (by my definition) optimized, but are amazing never the less, one of those games is Gate of thunder, yet it delivers a huge amount of unique BG tiles and sprites/frames, and those sprites are huge.

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: 3-way battle! Spriggan vs. M.U.S.H.A. vs. Robo Aleste]

Soldier Blade

That's a vertical shooter but I got to admit, for only 4megs its very impressive.

Honestly, seeing the kind of graphical diversity in Spriggan on a Standard CD-ROM2 game (with 64KB memory to work with) is MORE impressive than seeing the same graphical diversity on a HuCard.  Why?  Because when you insert a HuCard into the system, the CPU can see and access ANYTHING on that HuCard almost instantly... all the way up to 1024KB (8Mbit).  In contrast, when a CD game loads up a level from the disc, the CPU can *ONLY* see what's been loaded into memory (64KB standard, 256KB for Super CD, another 64KB if you choose to use ADPCM RAM for data instead of sound), without hitting the disc again for more data.  This is why the Arcade Card (18,432KB of memory) was so helpful in porting NeoGeo fighters with large sprites and many animation frames.  And also why SF2:CE was made a 20Mbit HuCard and not developed for the Super CD-ROM2.

Yeah, the ACD is fantastic for fighting games, because the way those games use their memory...for action games, Valis, castlevania, contra, shinobi, gate of thunder thunder force 3 etc, etc, the CD ROM2 for its time period, early 16bit was very good, and the super CD for its time period 1992 to 1995 was awesome, that gives you a potential of 5 megs per level, which gives you amazing games like Rondo, Winds of thunder etc... there is redundancy of course but none of that 5 megs includes music, opening, middle and closing cutscenes, as well as credits, title screens etc....of course you could do what Shadowgate did and access the CD every 5 seconds, or Tenchi o karu and which basically continuously accesses the CD that means of course that you cant play music from the CD.

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: 3-way battle! Spriggan vs. M.U.S.H.A. vs. Robo Aleste]

maybe youre right. I also kind of remember that there are short load times before the bosses? have to check on that again.
did you also include the additional available 64KB from the CD-ROMS ADPCM memory, which can be used for graphics as well? Thye might have used some of that RAM too. then it could go up to something around 8Mbit easily.
anyhow, only looking into the software would tell us how much in gameplay code and graphics was exactly used.

Your right, it has 64kb +64kb each level or load, even if it is only used for sound, that frees up the main memory for only code and graphics.....the 4 megs in musha has to be used for mundane things such as ending credits, title screen, the very nice looking opening cutscenes, the ending scenes, music, sound fx, code and ingame graphics, so you start to see why it looks  more impressive when compared to other 16bit vertical scrolling shooters, on cartridge or hucard format. Just look at the first level alone, the floating crystal city and then the floating castle with the green lightning in the BG, the variation in BG tiles and sprites is fantastic.

To think that Spriggan isn't even optimized, what I mean by optimized is two loads per level that don't hurt the flow of the game, the only CDROM2 game that comes to mind right now that is optimized,(two loads plus Super CD compatible) is Macross 2036, in my opinion this full potential is not always fully realized, one level that is though has you starting out in space where you pass a moon then come to a large space fortress/craft, then your inside the fortress, then you have a separate back ground not one but two large bosses plus your own ship is a completely different sprite, after defeating the two bosses you go to yet another unique back ground, where you fight another huge boss, with beautiful animation, the its attacks are very well done, on top of that you have several very, very slightly animated pictures that pop up during the level...name one horizontal hucard shooter that's any where near as impressive as this and when you factor in the ADPCM sound fx which are amazing, it becomes even more impressive.

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Dracula X (PC Engine) Vs Super Castlevania IV (SNES) - which game is better?]

There has been a few Dracula XX vs Rondo threads, and the comparison was a little more fleshed out. As far as SNES action games are concerned (contra, Demons crest, super ghouls n ghost, act raiser1, act raiser 2, Batman & robin, Hagane, and so on) Dracula XX is one of the more impressive titles by far with its large sprites, lots of frames, beautiful sprite and tile graphics, cool fx, and yes really good music, the pre boss fight music is amazing, the clock tower stage looks fantastic, in many ways, I prefer it to SCIV, im kinda curious on how a 16meg Rondo of blood port for the Genesis would have turned out.

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Dracula X (PC Engine) Vs Super Castlevania IV (SNES) - which game is better?]

TATSUJIN

this quite made me chuckle

and because it's also true.

Yeah, and I mean it, just look at Final Fantasy 3 or Chrono Trigger, amazing turn base RPGs...I truly want to know, is there a PCE turn base rpg((other than Mysterious Song )) that's as impressive as those two games, I don't have a lot of experience with these type games, I think Black Tiger is the one person who can answer that question with some kind of authority, and I know its kind of an ambiguous question since what exactly do I mean by impressive, well, I mean animation/special fx....any way, that's not the subject of this thread, so.

I remember a few people talking about background animation, this is another category where Rondo dominates, and BG animation and Parallax  scrolling, horizontal or vertical line scrolling such as is in rondo(last boss fight) rotating tunnels, warping fire, the leaning tower of pisa etc...im talking about actual animation whether it be tile or sprite animation,  such as lightning, rain, torches, fish, figures, cogs etc, most games just have a handful or a couple dozen frames, Rondo has hundreds of frames....as far as parallax scrolling goes, does SCIV or Dracula XX ever have three or more over lapping layers, I cant think of any off a hand, Rondo has a few like the first part of the ghost ship level..... and by the way, not every section in a game has to use parallax, just look at SOTN, there are many, many sections that don't have parallax.

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: PC Engine Screen-shot quiz]

Because I rip through so many PCE games I know so many of these, this is an okay game with poor animation for a Super CD rom2 game, looks more like a SNES action game.

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Dracula X (PC Engine) Vs Super Castlevania IV (SNES) - which game is better?]

Yeah,  many sprites and BG tiles in SCIV are what I would call unrefined, I even felt this way when I bought the game on release.

The snes was never going to reproduce a game like Rondo of blood, it doesn't have the CPU or the memory, to do so...just look at Dracula XX possibly the most impressive snes action game when it comes to the stuff im talking about, just look at the death battle, richter moves slower, death moves slower, the syths move slower, everything moves slower, at the same time it has half the number of syths and half the amount of blood onscreen at once, also look at the mermen, DracXX has a set number on screen with a set pattern, about three mermen at once, Rondo has far superior AI, and the most merman I got onscreen in rondo at once was eleven...nor did it have the CPU to reproduce the special fx((like draculas orb attack, or enemy fiery  deaths)) not to knock the snes, it was amazing at turn base RPGs and other type games.

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Dracula X (PC Engine) Vs Super Castlevania IV (SNES) - which game is better?]

Damn, I think I finally finished ripping Rondo, I know these numbers are boring to just about every one....your typical 16bit side scrolling action game, Altered Beast, shinobi, castlevania, GNG, Act raiser, etc are between 280 and 700 frames of animation, the best action games, batman & Robin, Demons crest, Dracula XX, Kaze Kiri, etc are around 1000 to 1100 frames of animation, Rondo has approximately 4000 frames of animation, but to be completely accurate, lets compare it to SCIV 700 frames, which is amazing for an 8 meg game, on average the sprites in rondo are far, far larger, so that 4000 frames vs 700 frames is actually 5000, 6000 frames(only a guess) vs 700 frames, ah, but it doesn't end there, not all animation is equal, many if not most of Rondos sprites have what I call full body animation, take richter vs Simon or the standard skeleton for example, whether the main character is standing on flat ground, facing up stairs or facing down stairs, if you swing your whip the upper and lower part of the body animate, 7 for the top and 7 for the bottom, in SCIV Simon and enemy sprites the lower part of the body does not animate, and since enemy characters and and bosses are typically made up of multiple sprites(not talking about multi jointed bosses) you see that you can save a lot of memory this way especially for cartridge game.

So its not 5000, 6000 frames vs 700 frames its more like 7000, 8000 frames vs 700 frames,(again a guess:)...Rondo of Blood is, a excuse my language, a Goddamn freak of video game design!!!

heres the last comparison of Rondo and SCIV, im sure I don't need to say which is which.





infact the game over animation for Maria has as many if not more frames than SCIV they are a bit small though, but you get the point.

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: What Turbo/Pc Engine games can you not be without?]

The Legendary Ax II, the music alone makes it worth it.

In my top five of all time favorite cartridge game music...it uses sound in a similar way to Super Castlevania 4 to put across a dark, lonely, depressing atmosphere, it blows my mind to think that this game is only 2 megs, with its huge bosses and pretty good animation, SCIV by contrast is 8 megs and so is Bloodlines for the Genesis, Dracula xx is 16 or more megs. Its biggest drawback is its low number of unique Background tiles.

[Buy/Sell/Trade / Re: WTB patched, translated, Dracula x rondo of blood.]

Im aware, my CD isn't working on my computer....so for right now this is the only way I can play the translated version. thank you for your response.

[Buy/Sell/Trade / WTB patched, translated, Dracula x rondo of blood.]

Like the title says looking for a patched, in English rondo of blood, on cdr, just message me with a price.

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: What Turbo game are you currently playing?]

Re: W-Ring

It's not that it is horrible, and others may like it but for me everything was just average. Average graphics, average sound, average gameplay, nothing special about level design, bosses are average to below average, there are 5 weapons but none are that cool and one overpowers every boss. There are a couple sort of cool spots but I was looking forward to the game and wasn't really impressed.

Completely agree.

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Ys Book I & II (TGCD) Vs Zelda: A Link to the Past (SNES) which game is better?]

I went with Zelda, I don't like either game that much actually, Now Ys IV is a different story,
By the way, im would love for some one to sell me a English patch Rondo of blood or Ys IV, just message me with a price, i especially want Rondo of blood.

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Would it be posable to convert Ghouls & Ghost to play on a PCE CD Rom2?]

Here are some more shots to add to the ones Tatsujin has posted.

pce sg                                                    genesis










 


There are some Backgrounds in the Gen port that are missing all together not shown in the pics above, but the worst part of this comparison is the animation, tons of frames are missing from the Genesis port, if I didn't know I would probably think that the pce port is 10 megs if the genesis game is 5 megs, not only because of the missing animation but also the missing tiles and the more simpler tiles that are used in Genesis game.

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Download vs. Download 2]

CrackTiger is right, Down load 2 has much better parallax scrolling, one level has 4 over lapping scrolls, which are on top of a line scrolling desert, and behind all that you have clouds scrolling at a different speed than the mountains below, very similar to the 3rd level in Macross 2036, but not quite as good. I haven't played the first DL game in a long time, so going just by aesthetics alone, DownLoad 2 blows the 1st game away, better  in game art/use of color, better animation etc.

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Dracula X (PC Engine) Vs Super Castlevania IV (SNES) - which game is better?]

Damn, im I the only person who likes Dracula xx, I like it a bit better than SCIV, fighting enemies and Bosses is actually fun in Drac xx... in SCIV, not so much. Dracula XX does have few problems with its gameplay though.

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: PC Engine Altered Beast]

The HuCard one has retarded difficulty.   

It's not difficult like "oh I need to get better at this game!"

its difficult like "oh look my toe touched an enemy.  Commence human pingpong ball mode."

Absolutely agree, its not even worth playing in my opinion, the cd port is better in this regard, no doubt.

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Gate of Thunder Vs Winds/Lords of thunder - which game is better?]

My vote goes to W/LOT as it's my favorite game of all time on any system.

Hell yeah, a master piece in my opinion, it has better game play, graphics and sound...its better optimized with 2 load times per level versus 1 for GOT, of course GOT is still way ahead of cart and hucard games, the best pce, snes and genesis cartridge games have around 400 to 500 sprite frames, 10 to 16 Background variation, smaller sprites and less sound fx, GOT  in comparison has 787 sprite frames and 34 to 37 back ground variations.

Only a hand full of games are optimized( more than one load time per level, WOT and rondo for the super cd and for the pitiful half a meg cd rom2 theres Macross 2036...it has pretty good animation, large bosses, and awesome sound fx thanks to the half a meg of memory dedicated to adpcm.

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: What PC-Engine Stuff did you get today?]

I just played the pce and genesis ports of altered beast and damn, the pce port seems as if it has 2 more megs of memory, one example is the first enemies you will see, the zombies, the pce port has 3 frames for walking and the genesis has 2 frames, but the pce has what I call full body animation, the bottom half and the top half(torso and arms are animated) where is the genesis the top half is un animated and of course the pce also has an death animation of about 5 frames, the uses the same single frame that all enemies use in the pce port....I think between the pce cd, hucard and genesis ports the pce cd is my favorite.

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Super Star Soldier Vs Final Soldier - which game is better?]

I picked SSS, I had more fun playing it and I think it has better visuals and sound, I really like the sound in this game, the music that plays when your fighting the scorpion boss is awesome.

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Superiorities of PCE games vs. the others?]

Comparing the games the pc engine dominates(im only comparing to the snes and genesis) in a couple of areas, and these superiorities came along with the introduction of the cd especially the super cd format...it completely thrashed the competition when it came to action games, when I say action games im talking about games like horizontal and vertical shooters, side scrolling games like shinobi, castlevania, and contra, contra type games are only theoretical though.

Lets compare what many people believe to be the best 16 bit shooter,Thunderforce IV, it has around 450 frames of animation, give or take and about 13 back ground variations, now lets take winds of thunder, it has around 930 frames of animation and 44 back ground variations. The problem with card or cartridge shooters is that they range from 2 to 8 megs in memory, there is one exception and that's the 2nd paroduius game for the snes, it has a whopping 16 to 18 megs of memory, it has around 750 frames of animation and between 15 and 18 back ground variations, so as you can see much better than Thunderforce IV, there is another factor, size, sprite size, big sprites take more memory than tiny sprites, below are the regular enemies from WOT and Parodius 2, no bosses.

WOT


Parodius 2 snes


The most impressive action games are around 16 or a little over megs, like Batman & robin for the genesis, Dracula xx for the snes(yes Dracxx is one of the most impressive when it comes to sprite frames, Back ground variation and sprite size) etc, Castlevania Blood lines and Super castlevania both have around 650 frames of animation in total, the above games have about 1020 and 1030 total frames. The Batman game has between 1020 and 1050 frames of animation and 17 or 18 back ground variations, Rondo of blood has over 3000 frames of animation and 59 back ground variations, lets not forget that the pce has half a meg of memory for adpcm soundfx, which I have heard could also be used to store graphic info like sprite and tile sets, what that means is that these card and cartridge games have a good number of soundfx Rondo has a huuuuuge number of unique soundfx.....Rondo also has far more BG tile animation, on top of all of this, you also get what cds are known for cut scenes.

The sprites in Rondo are huge, SCIV, Bloodlines, Batman and robin etc don't even come close, the closest one infact is Dracxx, a lot of the enemies that were cut from dracxx were some of the largest sprites in rondo, the largest animated fx were also cut out, enemy attacks in Rondo of bloodl like lightning, skull projectiles, wave attacks and item crushes are much larger than any sprite found in SCIV, in other words Rondo of blood is pure magic.

Rondo


SCIV snes


While the PCE is my favorite system because action games are my favorite type of games, im not saying its the best system, because other genres are lacking on the super cd format, like side scrolling brawlers, one on one fighters, platform games like Yoshis island sonic 3 or ristar and platform shooters, which actually fall in the action game category, amazing games of this type could have been produced for this system like a contra game,  but the system didn't get one nor did it get a brawler of the same quality of streets of rage 2 or 3 for the genesis or final fight 3 for the snes.

I haven't talked about the ACD, which took this crap to a whole new level, Fatal fury special is probably the most impressive game for the ACD, no gen or snes fighter even comes close when you look at sprite size, animation and so on, im tired but I might go into some of this furhter a little bit later.

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: PCE Golden Axe]

Damn, I didn't even think about  license and copyright issues when I opened my big mouth about buying this game, most people would say there is only only one high quality brawler for the pcengine and that's Double Dragon 2, this would make two, I just played the Genesis port like three days before I saw this thread....pressed CD, nice looking back insert and manual, and of course a spine card:) I use to pay between $70 and $100 for pce imports back in the early 90s, I would pay a similar price for this, I really want this in my collection and yeah, Black Tiger did an amazing job on the colors, wow.

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: PCE Golden Axe]

The recoloring is absolutely beautiful, Brawlers along with platform shooters is a genres that the pce is in need of, if this ever comes to fruition, I wouldn't hesitate one sec to purchase it.

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Ju O Ki (Altered Beast) Sucks]

Animation is the best thing about the pce port, the first boss alone has more than double the frames when compared to the genesis port.

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Ju O Ki (Altered Beast) Sucks]

Yeah, I did a comparison to the genesis port and on a technical level(visual) with the exception of multi scrolling BGs the pce port is more impressive, no doubt, but the sound and game play its a lot worse....the cd port  has better gameplay sound and cutscenes  than the hucard.