Anyone care to comment in-depth on the PC-FX hardware design?

[SamIAm]

I was going to post this as part of another thread, but I thought I'd make a new topic here instead and give this board some action.

I'm basically just a layman when it comes to computer hardware, but I would be very interested in reading what some of you with real knowledge and ability think of the PC-FX in terms of how its hardware was designed, perhaps in comparison with the likes of the PSX, Saturn, 3DO etc. Most of us know about the lack of 3D hardware, the decent JPEG decoder, the old sound technology, and whatever else we might glean from a spec sheet. Are there any other efficiencies or inefficiencies that the system has which you think are important to understanding what it is capable of?

There have been some very good comparisons of the TG-16 and the Genesis that go into detail and are very enlightening, and if people are starting to hack around with PC-FX stuff thanks to Mednafen, maybe we all can start learning some new things about the system. Any takers?

[Arkhan Asylum]

There is nothing wrong with the PC-FX and I think the PSG choice was the right choice.

The real problem was the lack of the 3D hardware which meant it couldn't keep up since the FMV style games came and went and people wanted something else.

You can see it in any game really, the sprites are amazing.  Look at Last Imperial Prince!

The PC-FX hardware itself is a dream to work with compared to the friggin Saturn anyways.

[Mathius]

I was always curious about how the PC-FX's soundchip sounded compared to systems like the Saturn.

[nat]

The PC-FX really seems like the ultimate 2D system from a technical standpoint. It's a shame more games weren't made to utilize the hardware.

[Arkhan Asylum]

I was always curious about how the PC-FX's soundchip sounded compared to systems like the Saturn.

How do you think the PCE soundchip compares to the Saturn?

It's basically the same thing.  Glorious, warm, fuzzy chiptunes.

The PC-FX, when looked at on paper, should have destroyed the Saturn.   PC-FX can easily do games the Saturn had that were huge successes.  All those arcade shooters, and games like Elevator Action returns would've been cake.   

the lack of 3D fucked it over though.

[SamIAm]

Does it really? I'd like to know. It seems to me like on paper, the PC-FX should have at least come out a lot cheaper than the Saturn. 

Granted, the PC-FX could have done a lot of games that the Saturn did, it's true. But which would you choose if you were an otherwise completely unbiased developer?

Saturn has two RISC CPUs at 28.6MHz each, totaling 50 MIPS. It's got a background GPU that can draw 5 planes, two of which can be simultaneous mode-7 planes. I've heard its sprite GPU matches the PSX's fill-rate all by itself if it's not drawing polygons. And its sound processor has 32 voices, is MIDI compatible, and can do everything at 44.1KHz. Not to mention the sound and CD-ROM control processors and the other junk in there.

It looks like the PC-FX has only a single CPU at 21.5MHz and just 15 MIPS. As for the GPU, I'd be curious to know how much scaling and how many sprites the GPU can really handle. As for the sound, aside from redbook CD audio, it seems as though the PC-FX can only play a short, looped, single PCM track or use a synthesizer that sounds like it came straight from the PC Engine.

Could the PC-FX's graphics processor do this? Note 5 background layers and a sprite layer that all scale simultaneously.

Here's another example. I think the "layers" are mostly sprites here:

Could it's internal synth do anything like this? It isn't streamed from the disc at all.

[Arkhan Asylum]

The PC-FX has 6 background layers, and 2 sprite layers, on top of that sweet JPEG nonsense.

as for the sound, whoopdeedoo its not able to do 32 voice MIDI.

I'd take the PSG over the MIDI crap to be honest.  It fits games better to me. 

CPU power is all relative here, because AFAIK, the Saturn has to do way more shit to get the video going.  It has 2 video chips, and 2 cpu's.  So yeah it has more power, but has to consume much of it to deal with the video chips.

The PC-FX does it all with less chips and is designed better.  If only the 3D gpu attachment actually came out. The lack of 3D is what ultimately shafted the thing

[nat]

Indeed. I think there are parts in Zeroigar where there are up to 9 simultaneous background layers. Obviously only 6 of these are "real" and the rest would have to be sprites, but it seems like the PC-FX could've handled a game like Astal with its eyes closed.

In fact, there are parts in Last Imperial Prince, later in the game, which I would consider comparable to that Astal clip. Granted the art style is significantly different, but from a technical standpoint the visuals are somewhat similar.

[Arkhan Asylum]

Indeed. I think there are parts in Zeroigar where there are up to 9 simultaneous background layers. Obviously only 6 of these are "real" and the rest would have to be sprites, but it seems like the PC-FX could've handled a game like Astal with its eyes closed.

In fact, there are parts in Last Imperial Prince, later in the game, which I would consider comparable to that Astal clip. Granted the art style is significantly different, but from a technical standpoint the visuals are somewhat similar.

Yes, Last Imperial Prince is a really good example of how badass the PC-FX really is.

As far as 2D goes, the thing is a power house.  It could run two PCE shooters simultaneously! \o/  YEAH.

And for scaling, just look at Boundary Gate.  It can clearly do beautiful first person RPGs, very well.

[SamIAm]

I'm honestly not trying to be anti-PCFX, but I've cleared Zeroigar and almost cleared Last Imperial Prince, and I never counted more than 4 layers, and there was never any heavy scaling/rotation. I think it was the cloud stage in Zeroigar and the deep forest area in LIP that had this. Did I miss something?

EDIT: Definitely, the PC-FX had the potential to be a great 2D action gaming console. I'm not disputing that, and I'm not trying to brag up the Saturn as superior. Instead, I just want to know what the system is good and not so good at, and comparing it to other systems makes it easy to understand.

[TheClash603]

I love the Saturn because it is the last system I consider "classic."  Reading this thread, it's a damn shame the PC-FX never was utilized to its strengths, because I would've loved the thing.  As it is now, I can't get one, because all of the games are text-heavy.

Indeed. I think there are parts in Zeroigar where there are up to 9 simultaneous background layers. Obviously only 6 of these are "real" and the rest would have to be sprites, but it seems like the PC-FX could've handled a game like Astal with its eyes closed.

In fact, there are parts in Last Imperial Prince, later in the game, which I would consider comparable to that Astal clip. Granted the art style is significantly different, but from a technical standpoint the visuals are somewhat similar.

As far as 2D goes, the thing is a power house.  It could run two PCE shooters simultaneously! \o/  YEAH.

It would be amazing if someone ported a PC-E greatest hits of shooters on to the PC-FX.  But here's the catch...  they are played in split screen and there is 2-player co-op/versus only.  The games switch every 15-60 seconds, a la Wario Ware.  Each time one of you gets hit you lose a life.  The goal is to play as long as you can without losing your life stock.  Obvious piracy aside (shhh, I won't tell if you won't), this would be the game of the millennium.

[Arkhan Asylum]

This really says it all.

PC-FX.

f
t
w

[SamIAm]

That's 5 layers, including two that are locked together so that the sprites can over/underlap both layers. The clouds are an old-school horizontal line split. Pretty good. Nice effect in the background at the end, too.

How about this? 3 layers, full-screen scaling, and a large multi-jointed boss made of rotating sprites.
(Cotton 2: Magical Night Dreams - Stage 1)

EDIT: Or this. 1 Layer, full-screen scaling, 704x448 resolution.

[Arkhan Asylum]

I think that boss in Cotton looks like crap.   It looks like a toy, or a puppet.

The hand drawn and animated bosses in Zenki look far better.   Kind of like how Boundary Gate looked dumb on the PS1 with all its polygon crap

You posted the same link twice btw.

[SamIAm]

I think that boss in Cotton looks like crap.  It looks like a toy, or a puppet.

The hand drawn and animated bosses in Zenki look far better.  Kind of like how Boundary Gate looked dumb on the PS1 with all its polygon crap

You posted the same link twice btw.

Fixed. Thanks.

And I think the Cotton 2 boss looks cool.

Anyway, subjective viewpoints on pretty graphics aside, is there anything to say about the amount of scaling/rotation the PC-FX can handle? Zeroigar's second boss is a decent start. I wonder if that's a sprite or a background layer?

[OldRover]

It's a background layer. The KING BG layers are able to rotate. Sprites are usually handled by the two 7up chips, though apparently some games utilize KING to generate sprites too. But any large-scale rotation on the PC-FX is probably gonna be a KING layer. I don't know about scaling though... might be pre-rendered or raster trickery. I don't see anything about scaling in the 6272 documentation, but there is tons of information on the 6261's various registers and ability to affect layers individually.

However, I don't think it's cool to come in here and ask about the PC-FX while trying to pimp the Saturn. That's just bad form. The Saturn is a bitch to code for and, like the PC-FX, its full potential was never taken advantage of. Just because a system has X feature, doesn't mean X feature was ever used. Wanna see an underwhelming performance in a console? Look no further than the Jaguar. Like the Saturn, that thing's a frankenconsole that was never fully exploited because it was too complicated. Having multiple processors looks great on paper, but when they don't work well together, or when they're a bitch to code for... it leads to lazy coding and underused features. The Saturn is plagued with this. The PC-FX was never fully utilized because its commercial lifespan was too short. With PC-FX homebrew about to take off, I can guarantee you that it will now be fully exploited, but by us independents, not by seedy marketing teams anxious to get out the next softcore hentai comic. It can only get better. The Saturn, however, will always be crippled by its overcomplicated hardware.

[nat]

Yeah, at first it seemed like you were genuinely curious but it now seems more like a passive attempt at trolling. No offense, BTW, if this is not your intent.

It's really easy to provide loads of examples from a console that had hundreds of games (or whatever) vs. a console that had a little shy of 100. Some might argue that a console is only as good as its games and whatever cool tricks they might exploit, but that wasn't the original question, was it?

[Arkhan Asylum]

Even so, I can't think of any Saturn games that trump the PC-FX's 2D graphics.  The hand drawn stuff on the PC-FX is pretty legendary if you ask me.

also, Can Can Bunny is a fine example of why the PSG was a great choice.  In the sea of changing music where everything went lolmidi, the PC-FX stayed true to the chirpy music.

Even if the thing wasn't a huge success, it is by far the most charming console of that era. 

Maybe since these tools are coming out, we can pump out some games for it and make the library even better, lol...

that would be hilarious.  Aetherbyte and Frozen Utopia can belt out a handful of shooters and be like "\o/"

[nat]

Also, one other thought about the 3D. While it's no question the console's lack of real-time 3D rendering ultimately did it in, in hindsight, I think it was a grand decision. There isn't a single 32-bit 3D game that doesn't look like utter shit in 2011. On the other hand, nearly all PC-FX games hold up extremely well these days.

Look at Team Innocent. They were forced to pre-render the 3D and it looks a million times better than any of the real-time polygon-rendered stuff on the competing consoles.

[Arkhan Asylum]

Team Innocent is one of the best games from that entire era to be honest.  There needed to be more games just like it, on any systems.

and yeah its nice the PCFX is all beautiful hand drawn/prerendered stuff.  no muddy 3D crap

[SignOfZeta]

I think the real answer to this question is "we'll never know". When it came to software something just...fell apart. Nothing really got made. Usually even a lame system has...something, often times a launch title, but its like NEC just couldn't seem to convince any developers to do jack with this box. There really aren't more than a very small selection of decent titles for this system and even the ones that are respectable, like Zenki and Zeroyger are pretty bush league considering the state of 2D in 1994-1997. No developer was able to find the time and money to max out the FX when it was current, and no home brew guy is ever going to do it so...we'll never know.

There are 100 or so games, but really that's quite a lot. The Neo Geo only has 157 games and it did a lot in those 157 games. The main reason for this was that they were all designed as arcade releases first, often times in arcades owned by SNK. Because of this anything you made WOULD get noticed. If you made the game good enough it would earn its money. The home cart release would then just be additional profit.

The same is the case with Cotton, Astra Super Stars, and many of the Saturn's best games. Marvel Super Heroes versus Street Fighter (one of the systems most technically impressive games, IMO) already made its money as an arcade release before it came to Saturn. Capcom knew it would, which is why they put their best people on it and didn't skimp on the budget. The same is true of Astra Superstars and Cotton 2, which were STV games.

When you go to make a game for a system few people even own...its hard to justify spending a lot of money on it since nobody will even see the thing except for its tiny captive audience. A top tier developer could have made something really great with the FX, but even the best accountants in the world couldn't keep you from losing money on the project.

Maybe if the Saturn didn't turn out to be such a popular 2D machine (which was not the original intention) then the FX could have owned that territory.

[SamIAm]

Perhaps I got carried away. It's not especially about the Saturn, though; I would have made the same arguments about the PSX if that had been brought up first instead. I'm not out to prove that one is more powerful, exactly, but if we're talking about specific functionalities and two systems are fairly close, I don't see anything wrong with bringing up examples.

I'm a Saturn fan, it's true, but I'm also the first person who would say how much slower it is at 3D rendering than the PSX, and how its VDP1 can't actually do polygon-on-polygon transparencies reliably without glitching - something I learned in a Saturn forum not unlike this one.

Anyway, I'll leave it at that. It's interesting to know that the PC-FX can rotate background planes and potentially sprites in hardware. Honestly, thanks. 

[OldRover]

and no home brew guy is ever going to do it

I'll make you eat those words.

[SignOfZeta]

and no home brew guy is ever going to do it

I'll make you eat those words.

I hope you do. I really hope you do.

But you won't.

[Arkhan Asylum]

If I ever get something going on the PC-FX, it will be something a fucking NES wouldn't even have problems doing.

It'd just look prettier and sound nicer. 

[OldRover]

But you won't.

In that case, I'll make you choke on them.

[NecroPhile]

... not by seedy marketing teams anxious to get out the next softcore hentai comic.

Damn right - bring on the hardcore hentai comics!

I hope you do. I really hope you do.

But you won't.

Mr. Positivity strikes again!

[SignOfZeta]

Mr. Positivity strikes again!

Do you actually think its possible for a homebrew developer to fully exploit the FX? When the system was current, had tens of  thousands of paying customers, and real pro dev teams working on it we got nearly nothing. We very rarely, two or three cases, even saw something as good as a high-end PC Engine game. Where is the funding and skill going to come from to make a full on FX game? Shit, how many full on PCE homebrew games have we seen? It looks like we will have one pretty soon.

I appreciate the homebrew scene, believe me, but a well made FX game that shows us what the system can really do seems like the most extremely remote of possibilities, at least until the dev tools get AMAZINGLY powerful, as in, so powerful even an idiot like me could make a game.

Maybe The Old Rover will just blow us all away with a NG Dev Team style release, but I just don't see it as being realistic. Even NG Dev Team has to charge hundreds of dollars for their MVS games (which are encrypted to hell and back) and also go multi-platform to make ends meet.

[OldRover]

Most homebrewers do it in their spare time, but we don't have the looming deadlines and marketing departments to answer to.

The PCE has been a real nightmare to work with. In order to get the most out of it, you have to have a deep understanding of assembly language. For us regular C coders, we have... HuC. And HuC is a mess... it's lacking in so many ways. Frozen Utopia has literally pushed HuC past its breaking point and not even come close to fully exploiting the PCE.

The PC-FX, on the other hand, is a completely different story. The toolchain is built using gcc as a base, with standard binutils, working in a Unix environment. Official tools for it were leaked out long ago, many of which can be used now. The compiler is efficient and generates very good code, unlike HuC which generates tons of bloat (macro soup = a bad time is had by all). trap15 and I are working on high-level functions for liberis to make it even more powerful (he's on SCSI, I'm on 7up), and when we get the M-JPEG encoder working, we can fully exploit the RAINBOW chip. The rest of the hardware was figured out and exposed long ago. The rest is up to the design prowess of the software developers. I can hire talent to create content, and my own coding skill is more than adequate. Furthermore, Charles MacDonald has also expressed interest in developing for the PC-FX. His skill with code and hardware hacking is legendary.

Again, the PC-FX was never fully exploited during its commercial days for two main reasons: 1, the system did not have enough market time for developers to really dig deep, and 2, the industry was already well into the "marketing team rules" phase, meaning that designers were at the mercy of the almighty yen. The first issue only applies to those of us who are still relatively new to the system; the second detail will never apply so it's not a roadblock.

So yeah... I think it's totally possible for a homebrew developer to fully exploit the PC-FX. But then again, how many consoles were truly "fully exploited" in the past? And how do you really define "fully exploited"? Some people look to Dracula X as an example on the PCE... but there's a few things I would have done differently that would have made it even better (mainly in the data loading scheme... it's really poor here).

[NecroPhile]

Do you actually think its possible for a homebrew developer to fully exploit the FX?

Yes, at least as tech. demos (look at the impressive things done on the PCE and SGX), though how many and how consistently those things will filter over to real games is questionable.

[Arkhan Asylum]

The plus side here also is, the PC-FX is 32 bit.  so,  C programming translates nicely.

C programming does not translate nicely to 8 bit.  Especially when its macro-oni and cheese all over the fucker

[Filler]

Most homebrewers do it in their spare time, but we don't have the looming deadlines and marketing departments to answer to.

On the romhacking side of things I've seen some stuff that is pretty great too. Some localizations are more complete, better translated, and handled better technically than commercial localizations of the time. Doing it in one's spare time means lots of projects don't get finished, and sometimes take years, but the lack of pressure and devotion can produce amazing results.

You've gotten me pretty psyched to see some awesome homebrew for the PC-FX now Old Rover! Keep us posted! Do you guys have a web site or anything? I'd offer to try to come up with a game but I'm thinking about trying something out for PC/mobile. I have yet to make a game so it's all still theoretical at this point. I'm a big PC-FX fan though. If I ever make something good someday maybe you'd consider making a PC-FX port? Or it could be like the 8-Bit version of Steins;Gate, a retro sequel kind of thing.

[SuperDeadite]

I've asked before, and I'll ask again. Someone port Doom to the FX.  Sure Doom is on everything known to man, but the FX needs it.  Also the PS1 and Saturn Doom ports are terrible, a good 32-bit console port needs to be made!  DO IT!

[trap15]

For what it's worth, since I'm aware of the hardware behind Saturn, PC-FX, and to a lesser extent PSX, I'll help clear some stuff up.

First off, Saturn's dual SH-2s blow the PC-FX's V810 away. Even one of the SH-2s out-performs the PC-FX's CPU. PSX's MIPS is also faster than the PC-FX's V810. The V810 is just not that fast of a CPU, unfortunately (though in my professional opinion, it's probably more fun to program V810 assembly than SH-2 and MIPS).

The PC-FX has 4 backgrounds on one of the video chips (KING), of which a single background can rotate/scale. These backgrounds are fairly powerful though; they can do all sorts of neat video modes per-background, which is interesting to play with. It has 2 more backgrounds, each one generated by a 7up (the same video chip that was in the PCE), which don't really have anything special. Those chips together also can generate a total of 128 sprites, 32 per scanline. And then we have 1 more background, which comes from the MJPEG decoder, which is actually where the PC-FX beat out all the other consoles of the generation. The PC-FX's MJPEG decoder can play JPEG video streams along with Redbook audio at a very pleasant 30 fps.
On the other hand, you've got Saturn with a full 3D renderer, and 4 background layers, 2 of which can rotate/scale. The 3D renderer gives it a nearly unlimited sprite count, and "virtual" backgrounds, without any per-scanline limitations. It lacks an MJPEG decoder, though I believe it has some sort of hardware acceleration for FMV, but it does not run at a consistant 30 fps, in any case.

The PC-FX's audio chip, SoundBox, is basically the sound chip from the PCE with 2 stereo ADPCM channels, and the ability to stream redbook audio. It's very not-fancy, though it certainly gets the job done.
The Saturn has a whole processor dedicated to handling any sound tasks, has 3 timers, a DMA channel, a full Yamaha FM sound generator, MIDI input support (not the general MIDI soundfont, it's a way to control the sound channels), and a total of 32 sound channels (which can be mixed and matched between FM and PCM) with a DSP that can apply 16 different effects.

In essence, the PC-FX was rather low-power for the time, however if they had actually released it with the 3D chip that was on their PC-FXGA boards, it might have stood a chance (the fill-rate, though slower than the Saturn even, was not too bad).

Also, I fully expect us homebrewers to be able to unlock the full power of this device; it's basically a PC-Engine on super-steroids, though we rarely saw anything that was even as good as most PCE software.

I've asked before, and I'll ask again. Someone port Doom to the FX.  Sure Doom is on everything known to man, but the FX needs it.  Also the PS1 and Saturn Doom ports are terrible, a good 32-bit console port needs to be made!  DO IT!

Haha, I'm sorry, that will probably never happen. The PC-FX just doesn't have the sprite power to do it unfortunately.

[SuperDeadite]

If the fucking SNES can run Doom the PC-FX sure as hell can.  (SNES Doom is shit I know, but still)

[Arkhan Asylum]

It's a perfect example of FMV not catching on properly. 

but, I think Doom can be done on the PC-FX.  128 sprites should be plenty.  Do I want to do this? hell no.  But I bet it could be done by someone with enough mental issues to try it.

They put Doom on the Spectrum. 

I'm not sure how it will handle Doom without the 3D chip though, since doom had multi-floors, lighting, rounded rooms, etc.

at the very least it could do Wolfenstein.


also FWIW: Soundbox is better than the Saturn/PSX sound.  Chirp chirp chirp.

[Mathius]

I've asked before, and I'll ask again. Someone port Doom to the FX.  Sure Doom is on everything known to man, but the FX needs it.  Also the PS1 and Saturn Doom ports are terrible, a good 32-bit console port needs to be made!  DO IT!

What? Doom on the PS1 was excellent! It had the best soundtrack too.

[SamIAm]

Wow, thanks for the insightful post, trap15. I have a few of questions, if you don't mind.

Are the 7up chips the only ones that draw sprites? 
Do the 7up chips have the same color palette limitations as the PCE?
Is it possible to freely layer the 7up planes/sprites and the KING planes in any way you like, or are there priority restrictions?
How can the MPEG layer be integrated into a real game?

Also, I think the commonly assumed number of planes that the Saturn's VDP2 can generate is five. I wouldn't be surprised if that's a mistake; after all, there are people who think that the PCE has dual CPUs and that the Sega CD can do HAM like the Amiga. However, I think that five was the number that Sega themselves put out. Have you verified it personally to be four (or trusted someone else who has)?

[Arkhan Asylum]

I just had an obnoxious idea for a game.  yknow, what if the background was entirely animated like a cartoon using mjpeg encoder, and you moved a sprite along it all platformer style.

It would be like playing a cartoon.  all flipbook style!  it would be alot of work to draw it so it doesnt look hokey but...

Imagine how neat that would look!  man.

[thesteve]

I just had an obnoxious idea for a game.  yknow, what if the background was entirely animated like a cartoon using mjpeg encoder, and you moved a sprite along it all platformer style.

re do china warrior that way arkhan

[SamIAm]

I just had an obnoxious idea for a game.  yknow, what if the background was entirely animated like a cartoon using mjpeg encoder, and you moved a sprite along it all platformer style.

I like this. Some early cartoons used live-filmed footage for complex backdrops, which was both effective and presumably easy for the animators. Something filmed out of a car window with a steady-cam could be great for a platformer, and a piece of cake for anyone with the equipment.

You could possibly have the frames advance according to the horizontal movement of the player character, like Dracula on the Sega CD. You would be limited to proceeding in only one direction, though, unless it's practical to have the system play the footage in reverse at any time.

[Arkhan Asylum]

You could possibly have the frames advance according to the horizontal movement of the player character, like Dracula on the Sega CD. You would be limited to proceeding in only one direction, though, unless it's practical to have the system play the footage in reverse at any time.

I really like this idea too.  But going reverse would look tarded, especially if you've got trees and stuff swaying in the breeze.  It would look unnatural probably.

China Warrior FX could be a good candidate!

[SamIAm]

But going reverse would look tarded, especially if you've got trees and stuff swaying in the breeze.

That's pretty much it: the only way it would look natural in reverse is if everything in the environment was 100% static. Also, the camera not shaking would become especially important because your eyes would pick up repeat shakes all too clearly.

[SignOfZeta]

I agree this is a great idea. FMV backgrounds have been done before, mainly in boring Euro shooters, but something more like the previously mentioned old cartoons would be wonderful.

For reference: Betty Boop Meets the Little King (something like that) and Popeye versus Sinbad (this one is fucking magic, btw). These use miniature models filmed with a tracking camera with cells on top, not exactly what Psycho Arkhan was talking about, but it does look really cool.

[Arkhan Asylum]

I was thinking more like someone who can fuckin draw good, doing some badass anime or highly detailed omgDVDQuality drawings/animations for the background.

None of this janky looking real outside world crap.   Cartoons!

[SignOfZeta]

Yeah, I can see that. Full hand drawn animation of backgrounds is kind of laborious, and the only thing you'd be actually animating is the parallax.

[Arkhan Asylum]

yeah, drawing in any form is laborious for me.

I don't know if there is anyone who would really want to do something like that.   It's too much goddamn work.

"Hey draw, a 3 hour show for me, cmon"

[SamIAm]

I met a girl at an art gallery who spent the better part of a year drawing 1000 full-frame pictures for a very short 5fps cartoon. The result was cool as it was, but it wouldn't be so nice in a video game, I think.

Ever see Blazing Star on the Neo Geo? The background of the 2nd stage is a prerendered and animated loop. Here:

That might be more practical.

Also, if you access to a studio-like environment with controlled lighting and a fixed camera, you could use stop animation. In fact, you could even try drawing background layers, cutting them out, and hand-animating your own parallax.

It's a lot of work any way you look at it, though. The camera out the car window option, at least, is the kind of thing you could pull off in a single day.

[Mathius]

Sounds like I am not the only one who looks out their driver's side window and thinks, "My gosh that's a lot of parallax!"

[trap15]

Wow, thanks for the insightful post, trap15. I have a few of questions, if you don't mind.

Are the 7up chips the only ones that draw sprites?  
Do the 7up chips have the same color palette limitations as the PCE?
Is it possible to freely layer the 7up planes/sprites and the KING planes in any way you like, or are there priority restrictions?
How can the MPEG layer be integrated into a real game?

Also, I think the commonly assumed number of planes that the Saturn's VDP2 can generate is five. I wouldn't be surprised if that's a mistake; after all, there are people who think that the PCE has dual CPUs and that the Sega CD can do HAM like the Amiga. However, I think that five was the number that Sega themselves put out. Have you verified it personally to be four (or trusted someone else who has)?

Yes, only the 7up chips can draw sprites.
Each 7up can output 15 color sprites (0 is transparent, obviously), and 16 color backgrounds, but you get to have very very wide spectrum of colors. You can "chain" the 7ups to make them output 240 color sprites and a 256 color background, but you lose having 128 sprites, and you go back to 64.
Each 7up creates a single plane for mixing (which is the sprites behind/in front of the background), which can be layered in any order around KING, though you cannot put the sprites behind a KING bg without it also being behind that 7up's bg.
MJPEG layer can be used for FMVs, or in a ridiculous fashion like the guys above were talking about.
Now that I think about it, I believe you are correct about the Saturn generating 5 layers. I'm not sure, so don't trust that quote (but the rest should be fairly accurate).