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Post by ommadawnyawn2 on Aug 17, 2020 5:34:15 GMT -5
As in 8-bit games seeming like 16-bit games, 5th gen games seeming like 6th gen games, and so on. Not just at the time but in retrospect as well. Pics and vids are encouraged though you can also focus on mechanics, controls, world building, audio, story or whatever you want. This can be games released as early or as late in a system's lifespan as you want. I'll do an obvious one to get it out of the way: Super Mario Bros. 3 (NES, 1988)(click for playthrough vid) -Controls that were unmatched even by most 16-bit games -Smooth multi-directional scrolling -Interesting hub map with branching paths, non-hostile locations, wandering monsters, destructible obstacles and temporary secret locations. It advanced its genre's complexity to near zelda levels while keeping it level-based and mostly straightforward -Variety that would've been impressive for the next gen with water levels that also had on land parts (and vice versa), the giant world, ice and fire levels, underground and indoors levels, maze castle levels, mini-bosses, the various and creative suits as well as a persistent item inventory -Slopes that you can slide down -Blocks thrown by enemies also affect other enemies -From previous games: unlimited continues, music changes within levels, power ups that carried over between levels, pick up and throw blocks, level skip ability (with better control over it here) -Includes Mario Bros. on the cart Mentioned games:Kirby's Adventure (NES, 1993) - Screenshot comparison gallerySoul Reaver (PS1, 1999/DC) Shadow of the Colossus (PS2, 2005) Conker's Bad Fur Day (N64, 2001) The Last Story (Wii, 2011) Final Fantasy XII (PS2, 2006) Donkey Kong Country (SNES, 1994) & DKC 2-3 Street Fighter Alpha 2 (SNES, 1996) Killer Instinct (SNES, 1995) Mega Man and Bass (SNES, 1998) Dragon's Lair and Space Ace (ARC, 1983/1984) Batman: Return of the Joker (NES, 1991) IS: Internal Section (PS1, 1999) Crisis Force (NES, 1991) Royal Stone (GG, 1995) TMNT2: Back from the Sewers (GB, 1991) Battletoads & Double Dragon - The Ultimate Team (NES ver., 1993) Little Samson (NES, 1992) Aladdin (SMS, 1994) Alien Resurrection (PS1, 2000) STUN Runner (ARC, 1989) Resident Evil Remake (GC)
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Post by Deleted on Aug 17, 2020 5:56:02 GMT -5
Also on NES, Kirby's Adventure due to its lovely use of colour in the backgrounds. Of course it came out very late, well after the SNES was released.
Soul Reaver on PS1 had really nice animation, seamless worlds and dimension switching on top of the environments being nicely detailed. It just runs really impressively on PS1.
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Post by JoeQ on Aug 17, 2020 6:03:42 GMT -5
Shadow of the Colossus. Late PS2 title with fantastic wide open world and lovingly animated giant colossi. It's a miracle they were able to make it run even as well as they.
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Post by ZenithianHero on Aug 17, 2020 11:04:35 GMT -5
Conker's Bad Fur Day on N64. Impressive visuals and sound quality on N64. Cutscenes were fully voiced and with lip syncing. Some usual blurred textures aside, could passed for an early Gamecube or PS2 game.
Last Story on Wii. Looked lost on the platform. Hard to explain, the graphics look like it was meant for Xbox 360 (as Mistwalker's platform of choice prior) but then downsized everything for Wii. It looked great but framerate was inconsistent during the town and some battles.
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Post by dsparil on Aug 17, 2020 12:29:07 GMT -5
Final Fantasy XII looks better than some of the launch PS3 games!
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Post by spanky on Aug 17, 2020 14:42:45 GMT -5
I love late era games when developers have really mastered the capabilities of the system and start cranking out really impressive stuff. As someone who has always been slow to move to the next gen, I've always loved sticking it out with current gen stuff until the bitter end and playing almost everything released in the last year or two of the system.
Donkey Kong Country's graphical capabilities are considered smoke and mirrors nowadays (sorta) but it was really impressive looking at the time and compared very well to the "next gen" stuff on the 3D0, Jaguar etc. All the marketing really played this up.
Ditto on Kirby's Adventure. With some more color it could have passed as a SNES game. Kirby has a habit of showing up late in a system's life with an awesome game. Kirby Super Star is a really tremendous game (though not quite next-gen looking) as well.
Would Street Fighter Alpha 2 for the SNES qualify? They had to cram a ton of megs and special chips into the cartridge to make it happen. And even then it was a bit underwhelming (loading times, missing frames and content, bad sound), but it felt like a minor miracle. It probably didn't compare super well to the Saturn and PS1 ports at the time but it was pretty amazing and "felt" next gen when it was all you had.
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Post by Snake on Aug 17, 2020 15:30:27 GMT -5
Agree for Donkey Kong Country, and Killer Instinct. Maybe even Clay Fighter. Visually, it just all looked so impressive using rendered graphics. It looked so alive.
Mega Man and Bass/Rockman and Forte on SNES. Mainly because they used 32-bit Mega Man 8 sprites and transferred it to the 16-bit system.
Dragon's Lair and Space Ace in the arcades. Hand-drawn animation in the age of 1983. Stands out so magnificently against regular Mario Bros, Spy Hunter, Tron, Arabian.
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Post by ommadawnyawn2 on Aug 17, 2020 15:46:21 GMT -5
The PS3 launch was the first time I was kind of disappointed with the next gen IIRC. Doesn't take away from FFXII though, and I loved finally moving away from separate battle screens and random encounters as well as the new combat mechanic ideas.
If you don't compare SFA2 SNES side by side with the later ports then yeah, you can easily fool yourself that it's on par. It's definitely impressive for the system besides the music which I agree is pretty mediocre sounding.
Regarding Soul Reaver I would also mention that it had a lot of voice acting in it, as well as QoL features like the teleporters between visited areas for fast travel and a soul magnet ability (though having to stand still wasn't optimal). The weapons you could pick up and use and being able to flip blocks on top of each other were some other nice touches. The one major thing it lacked I think was a map system.
Edit: While Dragon's Lair and the like looked awesome, gameplay was lacking and the difficulty too high. I think the latter finally caught up with the presentation for games like Day of the Tentacle, Sam & Max, Full Throttle and KQ7 in the 90s (well, the presentation took a step or two back, but it was for the better).
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Post by windfisch on Aug 17, 2020 16:58:29 GMT -5
While for me most examples here would fall into the "technically impressive" category, I wouldn't mistake most of them for following gen games (even if I squinted). For example, Conker's Bad Furday just shows too many N64 symptoms: Blurry image quality, low poly models with relatively limited animation and an often terrible frame rate. For a game to feel next gen, I think it would have to rely on some sort of trickery to fake being more powerful. Dragon's Lair is a great example for exactly that - it looks like a movie, because it more or less is. The Donkey Kong Country games, especially the third one, probably qualify, too. And Street Fighter Alpha 2 (SNES) I can get behind, too. Judging by videos only, I'd argue that Resident Evil Remake for the Gamecube would be one of the most effective uses of prerendered 3D. The enviroments are so detailed and dynamic that they barely seem prerendered. If I didn't know, that one might actually pass as early PS3 - at least on an SD CRT monitor. From the NES era I'd like to give a shoutout to Batman Return of the Joker. In many ways it almost looks like an okay-ish Mega Drive game. In fact it looks way better than its Mega Drive counterpart, though that port was pretty poor. The NES version features huge, well-animated sprites, clever usage of the limited color palette that rarely feels compromised, particle effects, (pseudo) parallax scrolling and a rocking soundtrack. However, the main giveaway would be the flickering:
Another one I could think of would be IS - Internal Section (PS1). By relying on abstraction and strong visual design the developers managed to forego the usual unstable models, ugly warped & low-res textures and unstable frame rate (edit: not to mention short draw distance), which would plague most PS1 3D games. The result almost rivals Rez on the Dreamcast:
edit:
And then there is Crisis Force (Famicom). Again, if it weren't for the flickering, and maybe with a handful of colors more, it wouldn't look out of place on the Mega Drive. Just look at that moment at around 3:00 (the ground breaks apart, revealing a parallax-layered rift and enemies "zoom" in from below, not unlike level 4 from M.U.S.H.A.):
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Post by ommadawnyawn2 on Aug 17, 2020 18:29:31 GMT -5
^Why would DKC3 qualify easier than 1-2?
While I agree with Return of the Joker too, if I apply what you said about Conker then it is immediately obvious that it's a NES game to me. But it is more on par with a late SMS or MSX2 game (or even certain MD or SNES games like Mystic Defender and Musya) than even the best looking NES games. It's also faster and smoother than similar SMS games I've seen with larger sprites. Of course SMS games didn't use those mapper chips, so that's a factor to consider.
It's a shame the 16-bit ports weren't handled with care, instead some other, unskilled dev did it (Ringler Studios did the MD version) which I think was US-based and it shows.
IS looks pretty awesome!
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Post by windfisch on Aug 17, 2020 19:06:28 GMT -5
DKC3 looks the smoothest in terms of colors, special effects and background/character models. DKC 1 certainly can look kinda rough - the seams do show at times. DKC 2 comes close, but imo it rarely matches the beauty of DKC 3's "naturalistic" lakes, waterfalls and trees (I dig DK2's Honeycomb stages, though).
My point about Conker was, that you'd have to change a lot to make it look like a legit PS2 or even a Dreamcast game. Return of the Joker arguably would require far fewer tweaks to work as a Mega Drive game.
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Post by toei on Aug 17, 2020 20:39:24 GMT -5
Not technically next-gen, but Royal Stone on the Game Gear looks like a 16-bit game:
The only thing that makes it obvious that it's a GG game is the sound.
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Post by jorpho on Aug 17, 2020 23:21:46 GMT -5
TMNT2: Back from the Sewers probably beats out a couple of Game Boy Advance games in terms of graphics and sound.
I ought to try TMNT3 some day. (The predecessor to Symphony of the Night, it seems.)
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Post by Bumpyroad on Aug 18, 2020 0:55:48 GMT -5
Battletoads & Double Dragon - The Ultimate Team(NES) always seemed like an early 16-bit title to me at the time.
On the side note: What are they doing with Star Citizen? Going last gen? It better be good with all those millions at stake, lol
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Post by ommadawnyawn2 on Aug 18, 2020 4:47:34 GMT -5
Those portable games look great for their systems (especially royal stone which uses the large GG color palette well - it's actually a bigger palette than the MD one) though for both you kinda have to imagine them with higher resolution, more animation and different sound for them to seem 16-bit. Maybe I should do some collages with the mentioned games and others, with side by sides of same system games and multiplat games from the same years. DKC3 looks the smoothest in terms of colors, special effects and background/character models. DKC 1 certainly can look kinda rough - the seams do show at times. DKC 2 comes close, but imo it rarely matches the beauty of DKC 3's "naturalistic" lakes, waterfalls and trees (I dig DK2's Honeycomb stages, though). My point about Conker was, that you'd have to change a lot to make it look like a legit PS2 or even a Dreamcast game. Return of the Joker arguably would require far fewer tweaks to work as a Mega Drive game. I would say DKC2 looked a bit worse than 1 at times, with very garish colors here and there and more obvious photoshop copy-pasting of different assets such as in the first level for example. It's more varied and sometimes better detailed though. DKC3 had worse overall use of colors and art direction to me, though a few areas look really good and foregrounds are more detailed and seemingly have more varied tilework. But then some locations like Wrinkly Kong's house look like they use much fewer colors and if you look at the land in the overworld it looks like it's floating on top of the water. Disagree on Return of the Joker since the average MD game uses about twice the colors (30+), more detailed backgrounds, the resolution is higher and of course the sound is way different with several more channels however the large sprites, some animation, sampled instruments and the speed of it are on par. But this is if we analyze it more closely, I would buy it at a glance.
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