Pushing the Limits of the TG-16/PCE hardware

[spenoza]

Hi all. I'm writing an article for Racketboy (www.racketboy.com) to complement the last two I helped him construct, TG-16 101 and TG-16 Defining Games. This upcoming article is in his "pushing the limits" series which attempts to name the games that pushed the CPU, graphics hardware, or sound capabilities the hardest to achieve technical or stylistic excellence. Note that games that suck that are still technically impressive do pass muster.

I've already got a few games for the list but I was wondering if any of you had any other possibilities to offer.

Magical Chase - Graphically spectacular, with fast, colorful graphics and multi-plane scrolling, not to mention music that doesn't suck.

Parasol Stars - The music in the game is incredibly fast and complicated and no doubt stressed the system's audio capabilities.

Ginga Fukei Densetsu Sapphire - Obvious pick, here. Does anyone know if the game does actual, real-time polygon rendering for the couple bosses that use it or does it just pre-render polygon-looking sprites and animate them gosh-darned well?

Lords/Winds of Thunder - Pushes the system graphically and features some very nice effects.

Street Fighter II' - Best of the console ports until Super SF2 on SNES: BIG sprites, good animation

Dracula X - Great animation and engine design

Anybody have any other offerings? I'll also accept prize screenshots for the article if anyone is interested. Anybody who contributes ideas I use will get a thank you mention at the end (or beginning) of the article.

[nat]

For Sapphire they used pre-rendered polgyons that they were able to animate so well you'd think the system is rendering them in real-time.

Other games you might want to consider: Any of the SNK fighter ports (Fatal Fury 2, Special, World Heroes 2, Art of Fighting, etc). These ports are all EXCELLENT and some, like Art of Fighting, utilize special zooming effects. Many people consider these Turbo ports better than the NeoGeo originals.

I'd probably recommend mentioning Air Zonk before Magical Chase. Air Zonk features an absolutely awesome soundtrack, probably the best soundtrack on the system that isn't redbook audio, at least on a technical level. It also includes all that layered multi-plane scrolling stuff that Magical Chase does.

Hmm... This is tough without being able to look at my Turbo library for ideas.

I've heard Metamor Jupiter has some nice graphics with scaling and such although I've never played that one.

[Seldane]

I hear Neutopia 3 is the most technically advanced game for the PC Engine. Apparently not even the PS3 would be able to handle it.

[runinruder]

3x3 Eyes, when played with the Arcade Card, deserves mention, because its cinemas are absolutely incredible--easily the most impressive anime-style cinematics to be found in a PCE game. 

Air Zonk deserves mention for its visuals and soundtrack. 

Dungeon Explorer and The Legendary Axe II feature some of the best HuCard audio.

For CD visuals, Anearth Fantasy Stories and The Legend of Xanadu II are deserving of accolades.  And Shape Shifter has some stunning parallax for a Duo game. 

And, of course, Ys Book I & II for the most phenomenal video game music ever.  Dungeon Explorer II's soundtrack ranks up there as well. 

[Keranu]

Runin practically sumed up my thoughts on this as well .

I also think that Tengai Makyou: Kabuki Den might be worth a mention just for the massive amount of media in that game. I posted the stats once from messing in the debug mode and there are so many hours of voices and cinemas that it's absolutely amazing for a game back then and even today.

[NecroPhile]

Many impressive games have already been mentioned, but I'll add a little more.  Vasteel has some of the best parallax effects known to the Turbo, and Night Creatures has the highest level of sheer sucktitude.

[nat]

... and Night Creatures has the highest level of sheer sucktitude.

Genpei Toumaden is by far the worst game released on the Turbo/PCE platform, hands down, especially on a technical level. This game deserves an honorable mention in the article for the SHEER MAGNITUTDE of CRAPTACULAR qualities oozing from every aspect of the game. This game pushed the limits, alright, of how low the Turbo would go.

I've heard stories of TurboGrafx and PC Engine systems shutting down and never running again when their owners attempted to play this game.

[NecroPhile]

I can't argue with that nat, but for some idiotic reason I was limiting myself to the TG-16.

[nat]

Probably because he mentioned it and not the PCE a bunch in his message, but to be honest, the two blur together in my mind.

[spenoza]

Well, this article is going up for a lot of readers who may not have the in-depth familiarity with the PCE that you guys have. I will include some PCE games but I am trying to make sure a good portion of the list is stuff that was released in the US, if only because some of it might, or already has, come back on the Wii's VC. The whole "know your audience" thing 

I've been out of the PCE scene a while, particularly since I no longer have one, but back in the day I have a TG-16 with CD attachment, Super System Card, a copy of Dracula X I bought from a store, new, in Japan when I was visiting once, and even, later on, an Arcade Card Pro. I also had one of Shadoff's Kisado Adapters, SFII' and an NEC Avenue 6 pad. I traded it all away summer of '97 for a Saturn rig on BT's Turbo List. I wish I remembered who I traded it to so could see if they still have any of the stuff, just for reminiscence sake.

[Joe Redifer]

Gate of Thunder has some awesome scrolling that seems to defy the TG-16's ability (like Lords of Thunder).  Gate of Thunder also has some of the quickest loading time EVER.  Also at the beginning of the 3-in-1 disc, there is some scaling and rotation that BLOWS THE XBOX360 AWAY!

[CrackTiger]

For Sapphire they used pre-rendered polgyons that they were able to animate so well you'd think the system is rendering them in real-time.

Other games you might want to consider: Any of the SNK fighter ports (Fatal Fury 2, Special, World Heroes 2, Art of Fighting, etc). These ports are all EXCELLENT and some, like Art of Fighting, utilize special zooming effects. Many people consider these Turbo ports better than the NeoGeo originals.

I'd probably recommend mentioning Air Zonk before Magical Chase. Air Zonk features an absolutely awesome soundtrack, probably the best soundtrack on the system that isn't redbook audio, at least on a technical level. It also includes all that layered multi-plane scrolling stuff that Magical Chase does.

Hmm... This is tough without being able to look at my Turbo library for ideas.

I've heard Metamor Jupiter has some nice graphics with scaling and such although I've never played that one.

Some of the flat shaded polygon enemies in Sapphire animate smooth enough to look like the real deal, but most of the prerendered cgi looks like a poor man's DKC. Sapphire does still do some impressive effects and has lots of nice art though.

The Neo Geo Arcade Card ports really are special by 16-bit console standards and hold up amazingly well to the originals.

Air Zonk is pretty much all 'slate' parallax that the NES and Intellivision do fine(like Sonic minus the mid ground play area). Magical Chase has independant layers of overlapping bgs that shouldn't even be possible on the SuperGrafx as well as some nice transparent shadow effects and other neat tricks(like wavy sections of background).

But it stands out more by the quality art that was masterfully translated to Turbo graphics, the top notch soundtrack both on a technical level as well as just music and most importantly, the real game/gameplay is as good as the aesthetics.

Air Zonk is most note worthy for its amazing soundtrack, particularly on a technical level.

Metamor Jupiter does do some cool effects, but some chug so bad that it counteracts the wow factor.


Champions Forever Boxing is a TurboGrafx/U.S. game thats technically impressive for it's 100% sampled soundtrack/sfx which all sound great.

Not only does Vasteel push 20+ layers of slate style parallax on screen at once, it has transparent layers of backgrounds like the SNES, some of which twist and warp around. It also has some foreground columns in places that make the game chug. But they're 'technically' impossible for the system so its cool to see them. It also has some nice prerendered robot sprites that look nicer than most of Sapphire's.

It Came from the Desert makes good use of patches of fmv. John Madden Duo CD Football features some nice color full screen fmv(boot the game with the System 2.0 Card for a sample).

I think Lords of Thunder is as impressive over all as any other game on '16-bit' consoles at the time(even the Sega-CD version).

Forgotten Worlds is usually over looked for recreating CPS-1 graphics almost perfectly, while people go crazy over Sega-CD's grainy Final Fight and the heavily butchered SFII ports for all consoles at the time. Its about on par with the 3DO SSFIIT port.

Falcon and Gunboat both feature realtime polygon 3D graphics. They're not very good 3D graphics, but its still polygons on a TG-16. 

[SNKNostalgia]

I have been trying to find a copy of Vasteel forever. I even tried an ISO off the internet which turned out to be a bad rip with out of sync audio. Cadash is also one of the best looking TG-16 games to me. It had really good details, control, music and a true 16-bit feel to the game.

The Capcom classics Collection Vol. 1 kinda ruined Final Fight and Forgotten Worlds various ports for me. Still, I need to check out Forgotten Worlds on the Duo. Final Fight Sega Cd had some grainy details and lacked in colors a lot, but it made up for it with the CD audio track, 2 player, play as Guy, more scenes and the slowdown wasn't nearly as bad as the SNES version. Also, I always found it funny how the SNES version of Final Fight says it is OK to gay bash, but not to beat up women. They replaced the hooker chicks like Poison with feminine guys with handcuffs and dye-job hair. Something my friend and I always laughed about.

[TurboXray]

Are you looking for games the push the system or just look great in general?

 For earlier release on hucard - Gunhed is pretty impressive. Super Star Soldier and more impressively Solder Blade, are among top hucards titles that really push the system. Slow down (at the time) didn't come from pushing sprites around on screen - it comes from calculating collision detection. Whether tiny or large, alot of interactive sprites onscreen equals a lot of collision detection. Both the Star Soldier series excel in these areas IMO.

 Someone already mentioned Street Fighter 2 CE. You don't even have to mention tech specs for people to understand the amazing job they did on this port.

 Magical Chase quite impressive. It really hides the single plane BG limitation of the PCE. The first level uses hsync interrupts for multi-scrolls and palette updates to the BG base color (the sky that looks like it's own independent BG layer). It also uses sprites to make up part of the foreground scroll with see-through parts. 


 For CD - Lords and Gate of Thunder come to mind. Not only do these games run at a solid frame rate, have multiple hsync calls (parallax), use dynamic tiles for cuts outs in areas were the Duo can't do multi-scrolling planes (hardware wise), but it also decompresses the tilemap *and* tiles/sprites in realtime while the game action is happening on screen. That's a pretty amazing feat. These games are polished examples of what the Duo could do.

 Sapphire catches some heat for it's pre-rendered animation, but the fact that they can do all the collision detection and other effects while still having enough cpu cycles to upload high frames per second streams of animation (sometimes multiple streams), is pretty damn impressive. Throw in the fact that this game is two player and it just adds to it.

 Seirei Senshi Spriggan also deserves credit. This game manages to squeeze alot out the small 64k that the original CD system card used. Even better than some Super CDROM games that use 256k.

 Gulliverboy - because the custom huVideo routine manages to squeeze a lot out of a single speed CDROM unit without a co-processor. The game also uses the arcade card(if present) as a buffer to removed redundant loading from the CD unit.
 
 
 Those are just the ones off the top of my head.

[CrackTiger]

The Capcom classics Collection Vol. 1 kinda ruined Final Fight and Forgotten Worlds various ports for me. Still, I need to check out Forgotten Worlds on the Duo. Final Fight Sega Cd had some grainy details and lacked in colors a lot, but it made up for it with the CD audio track, 2 player, play as Guy, more scenes and the slowdown wasn't nearly as bad as the SNES version. Also, I always found it funny how the SNES version of Final Fight says it is OK to gay bash, but not to beat up women. They replaced the hooker chicks like Poison with feminine guys with handcuffs and dye-job hair. Something my friend and I always laughed about.

[spenoza]

Man, I love it when you guys go all technical on me. And I'm not being sarcastic, either. I really love technical discussion about hardware capabilities and programming "hacks" to get around them. In fact, I have a real doozey of an article idea after this one that'll really take some research on my part (or rather, polling the minds of people who are in the know) on technical details.

Anyway, you guys have provided lots of great ideas for the article. I'll just have a thank you to the forum in the article. If you want to read (and critique) the other articles, here are the links for the 101 and the definitive games articles. I'm sure I've got some stuff horrible wrong. I haven't owned one in forever. Feel free to rip into me.

http://www.racketboy.com/retro/2007/06/tubrografix-16-tg16-101-beginners-guide.html

http://www.racketboy.com/retro/turbografx-16/2007/06/the-games-that-defined-the-turbografx-16.html

[nat]

You know, it's a funny coincidence that I read both those articles just yesterday. I don't remember how I stumbled across them.

There was something in one of them that seemed inaccurate to me. I don't remember at all now what it was.

[ccovell]

Well here are some that I had noticed:

The later CD-ROM games rectified the problem with lackluster music and sound quality and set the tone for the medium.

I think you mean the later CD-ROM games rectified the problem of lackluster music...  Otherwise, the above means the CD music was crap.

Blazing Lazers is considered by many to be part of Hudson's Caravan Shooting series but there is some contention in other circles due to the stylistic differences and the fact that it wasn't programmed by Hudson.

No, Blazing Lazers (Gunhed) is part of Hudson's Caravan series, having been used in the 1989 Summer Caravan.  It's just not part of the "Soldier" series.

Gates of Thunder...

Gate!


Anyway, back on topic.  I've always been impressed by Parasol Stars' graphics, not just the audio.  This game throws around plenty of large sprites, with really vibrant colours.

Also, let's not forget Faceball as another game that draws polygons on-screen (in 2 little windows)...

Finally, I second Sherlock Holmes as having not only FMV, but doing it in the PCE's 512-pixel horizontal resolution.

[nat]

This is totally off-topic, but seeing your message just now reminded me, Chris: what's up with your website?

[ccovell]

Ah, my friend (who hosts my site for me) lost his credit card, so he had to have the number changed.  He also forgot to inform godaddy.   

I don't know how long it will take for the site/URL to be restored, but I hope it'll be quick!

[ParanoiaDragon]

Actually, Faceball uses a maximum of 4 windows!  It's pretty neat to see, too bad it was just a search & destroy party game, rather then including some kind of adventure mode.

[ccovell]

Right, I forgot about the 4-player mode.  I have no friends and only 2 hands.   

[PhilBiker]

http://www.racketboy.com/retro/2007/06/tubrografix-16-tg16-101-beginners-guide.html

One big mistake: the Most Duos won't play burned CD-Rs, as a matter of fact, some Duos have been known to fail as a direct result of attempting to play CD-Rs.  The older TG-CD system is much more robust in this regard.  Your points about "cheap" CD games are not correct.  Otherwise, nice article.

[termis]

http://www.racketboy.com/retro/2007/06/tubrografix-16-tg16-101-beginners-guide.html

One big mistake: the Most Duos won't play burned CD-Rs, as a matter of fact, some Duos have been known to fail as a direct result of attempting to play CD-Rs. 

You know, I keep on hearing that, but both of my Duos play CD-Rs without too many problems, and people here also seem to be okay with it. 

My gray Super CD-ROM2 system however, has had some issues...

[Turbo D]

I had no problems with the laser when playing cdrs. My sound died out recently but that is a totally diff story dude.

[SignOfZeta]

http://www.racketboy.com/retro/2007/06/tubrografix-16-tg16-101-beginners-guide.html

One big mistake: the Most Duos won't play burned CD-Rs, as a matter of fact, some Duos have been known to fail as a direct result of attempting to play CD-Rs.  The older TG-CD system is much more robust in this regard.  Your points about "cheap" CD games are not correct.  Otherwise, nice article.

Nah, I'd say most Duo will play CD-Rs, as will all the other hardware because they all have the same CDROM drive.

Also, as for "fail"ing when playing a CD-R, this is no big deal. What happens is the laser parks itself way out where it can't be retracted. Manually winding it back towards the center a cm or two will make it good as new.

[Tatsujin]

very nice and easy to read article. thanks for that. great work.

[spenoza]

Chris, Parasol Stars has always been one of my favorite games for the system in general. I will definitely make mention of the graphics. Still, the music is, I find, some of the best ever on TurboChip and demonstrates sounds and tempos I've never really heard on the system before or since.

[spenoza]

Racketboy is sitting on the article for a few days. I imagine it'll go up Sunday, since that's the day he's posted the other two I did for him.

[lkermel]

Another game nobody mentionned is Dead Moon which has an incredible parallax scrolling...

[OldRover]

Another game nobody mentionned is Dead Moon which has an incredible parallax scrolling...

A lot of people like to rag on it so maybe that's why no one's mentioned it. I always thought it was a nice solid title with pretty decent parallax.

[nat]

I like Dead Moon. Some of the enemies are a little generic, but it's still a fun game.

[runinruder]

Dead Moon isn't bad.  It has some impressive (for a HuCard) parallax and some nice tunes (stages 1 and 3).  And I like how the stage environments logically connect up.

But the enemy designs are wretched; it feels like you're fighting an army of flying... shapes.  The whole thing is pretty easy and not very intense, and there's nothing distinct about the gameplay (except maybe the turning-around aspect of boss battles). 

Considering how many awesome 16-bit shooters there were, Dead Moon ends up being pretty forgettable.  I think it's okay and all, but there are probably a good twenty-five shooters for the Duo alone that I prefer.

[Keranu]

I love Dead Moon, I think it's stage progression alone is what makes it stick out from other shooters and a very cool experience. Runin is right about the boring enemies though, however I think some of the bosses in the game were pretty sweet (especially the last).

[NecroPhile]

I agree whole-heartedly with runinruder.  I like Dead Moon too, but it doesn't stand up and shout when compared to Lords of Thunder, Soldier Blade, Air Zonk, Gate of Thunder, etc., etc., etc.  It gets even worse if you're not limited to the US releases.

[TurboXray]

 Dead Moon: Whatever isn't supposed to be there, the aliens put there. It must have taken the aliens a while to make that under ground cave level on the Moon 

[nat]

That's nothing compared to the "Lake".

[Digi.k]

gasp where is the love for parodius! 

probably is trickery but konami seem to have pulled of some great sprite scaling
/parodius2.jpg

not to mention the offbeat design and great colours used
/parodius.jpg

and the pink cloud and graveyard stages have even better layered scrolling than deadmoon

[spenoza]

Welp, Racketboy is still sitting on the article. I may pester him about it. Some games didn't make the cut. The list is less than exhaustive, but I think it covers the TG-16/PC Engine's range pretty well. I will keep you guys posted on it.