10 Mega Drive (Genesis) games that pushed hardware limits (Best Graphics)

ggx2ac · Jun 2, 2019

You might remember 14 NES Games that pushed hardware limits, 14 SNES Games that pushed hardware limits, 14 PS1 games that pushed hardware limits and 11 Gameboy games that pushed hardware limits.

Now get ready for: 10 Mega Drive (Genesis) Games that pushed hardware limits (Best Graphics)

1) Disney's Aladdin
2) Virtua Racing
3) Thunder Force IV
4) Ranger-X
5) Gunstar Heroes
6) Toy Story
7) Panorama Cotton
8) Contra Hard Corps
9) Alien Soldier
10) The Adventures of Batman & Robin

Tizoc · Jun 2, 2019

Oh THAT'S why this video showed up on my feed, I legit thought it was YT recommending the last SEGA MD Classic stream @_@

ghostcrew · Jun 2, 2019

Looking forward to watching this! I couldn't believe how good Aladdin looked when I first saw it running on a Mega Drive. It blew my mind - it looked like the film.

Shion · Jun 2, 2019

Why not 14?

Games like Vectorman, Flink, Story of Thor, Yu Yu Hakusho, Monster World IV and Red Zone deserved a mention IMO.

It's a good list, though.

Deleted member 10428 · Jun 2, 2019

Really? No Red Zone in the top 10.

JayCeeJim · Jun 2, 2019

Genesis was such an interesting console, hardware wise.

WyLD iNk · Jun 2, 2019

Red Zone was robbed.

Tizoc · Jun 2, 2019

This got me to wondering; in TMNT 4 on SNES, you can throw enemies to the screen, but the MD/Genesis ver. lacks this. Why is that? It seems the MD could've incorporated it.

lordmrw · Jun 2, 2019

I would have put Panorama Cotton at the top of the list but overall not bad.

s_mirage · Jun 2, 2019

Hmm. I would have dropped Aladdin from that list. I enjoy the game, and it looks good, but I'm not sure how much it's pushing the hardware; it looks more likely that the end result comes from a combination of good development tools and having animation produced by Disney Feature Animation. Red Zone should have been on the list.

Tizoc said:
This got me to wondering; in TMNT 4 on SNES, you can throw enemies to the screen, but the MD/Genesis ver. lacks this. Why is that? It seems the MD could've incorporated it.

Konami often seemed to put more effort (and sometimes ROM budget) in their SNES games. Sunset Riders is a great example of this, with the Mega Drive version suffering severe cuts.

liquidtmd · Jun 2, 2019

Reminds me to ask, and admittedly I haven't googled - much was made of the SNES' Mode 7.

Was that just a gimmick in the sense the Mega Drive could have replicated the effects to a large extent, or was it entirely unique?

fiendcode · Jun 2, 2019

God, I hope Panorama Cotton makes it into the MD mini.

s_mirage said:
Konami often seemed to put more effort (and sometimes ROM budget) in their SNES games. Sunset Riders is a great example of this, with the Mega Drive version suffering severe cuts.

TMNT Tournament Fighters is another good example, SNES game is great while Genesis is garbage.

Didn't always work this way though. Sparkster and Tiny Toons were better on Genesis imo, but those are probably it.

raketenrolf · Jun 2, 2019

Never realized that the japanese version of Hard Corps is so expensive. Like wtf is wrong with people?

Dragon1893 · Jun 2, 2019

Not having Vectorman on this list makes absolutely no sense. Hard to take the list seriously without it.

I'm assuming Aladin is so high because of the animation but I think the Earthworm Jim games beat it in that regard.

rawhide · Jun 2, 2019

Tizoc said:
This got me to wondering; in TMNT 4 on SNES, you can throw enemies to the screen, but the MD/Genesis ver. lacks this. Why is that? It seems the MD could've incorporated it.

It's a rushed, low-priority adaptation, that's pretty much all there is to it. More time for optimization or simply a bigger ROM would have done wonders.

Dark1x · Jun 2, 2019

raketenrolf said:
Never realized that the japanese version of Hard Corps is so expensive. Like wtf is wrong with people?

Yeah, it sucks. I've been trying to get a copy of that and Vampire Killer and I've had to give up. It's just not possible without dropping an insane amount of cash. Really annoying situation.

I assume it's the result of low popularity of the system + late release.

entremet · Jun 2, 2019

Dark1x said:
Yeah, it sucks. I've been trying to get a copy of that and Vampire Killer and I've had to give up. It's just not possible without dropping an insane amount of cash. Really annoying situation.

I assume it's the result of low popularity of the system + late release.

It's a fundamentally different game as well, no? It has a lifebar I think.

s_mirage · Jun 2, 2019

liquidtmd said:
Reminds me to ask, and admittedly I haven't googled - much was made of the SNES' Mode 7.

Was that just a gimmick in the sense the Mega Drive could have replicated the effects to a large extent, or was it entirely unique?

It wasn't unique, and it was quite limited, but the Mega Drive couldn't easily replicate the effects on its own at a fast speed. The Mega CD's scaling abilities kicked the crap out of the SNES's, but its framerate suffered as the graphic data it produced had to be transferred back to the Mega Drive's VRAM before being displayed. There was only about enough bandwidth to manage about 15fps if the entire screen was being redrawn by the Mega CD.

Dragon1893 · Jun 2, 2019

Ranger-X did some interesting things with its backgrounds.
Didn't know about Panorama Cotton, looks great.
I think the 16 bit era is the most interesting to revisit when it comes to this kind of stuff.

Dark1x · Jun 2, 2019

entremet said:
It's a fundamentally different game as well, no? It has a lifebar I think.

That's right. As someone that can 1cc Contra 3 on normal (and still finish on hard), I find The Hard Corps US version to be insanely annoying. I've finished it before but barely - it's wayyyyy more difficult and less fun to replay as a result. The Japanese version is a lot more enjoyable for me.

Tizoc · Jun 2, 2019

rawhide said:
It's a rushed, low-priority adaptation, that's pretty much all there is to it. More time for optimization or simply a bigger ROM would have done wonders.

Dang. I still like it as it was one of the games we owned and played as kids. Still like it to this day despite the snes ver. Xp

Vinegar Joe · Jun 2, 2019

Dark1x said:
That's right. As someone that can 1cc Contra 3 on normal (and still finish on hard), I find The Hard Corps US version to be insanely annoying. I've finished it before but barely - it's wayyyyy more difficult and less fun to replay as a result. The Japanese version is a lot more enjoyable for me.

Having played both recently, I agree. Honestly, they ruined the balance IMO.

If you have access to it, there's a hack that fixes the difficulty of the US version. It's pretty great.

rawhide · Jun 2, 2019

Hard Corps with 1-hit kills isn't a huge deal, IMO--most of the game is static, so a lot of things simply won't hit you with a little practice and thus it doesn't matter all that much whether you have a life bar or not once you hit a certain level of familiarity.

lazygecko · Jun 2, 2019

liquidtmd said:
Reminds me to ask, and admittedly I haven't googled - much was made of the SNES' Mode 7.

Was that just a gimmick in the sense the Mega Drive could have replicated the effects to a large extent, or was it entirely unique?

You can do it in software, although far from as efficiently of course.

This demo works by streaming the whole level as a singular bitmap image (as opposed to being constructed out of tiles). It works but also means it's prohibitively expensive in terms of storage space. I believe the demo used a 1024x1024 bitmap which by itself is a full 16mbit cartridge, so the tech would not have been feasible in practice with the ROM budgets of the early to mid 90s.

A lot of existing games manage "Mode7"-esque effects through other means that are more limited in scope but on the flip side don't suffer from the exact same technical limitations of Mode7 itself (mainly not having to sacrifice an entire background layer to achieve the effect). I think the most common is the swaying effect on backgrounds or large sprites by displacing/distorting them on a tile-by-tile basis. You can only sway the objects so far before it stops making sense visually compared to true rotation, but on the other hand I'd say it arguably looks better than true hardware rotation for what it's trying to do since you don't get the same kind of pixel artifacts from it.

Chuck Rock 2 for example makes pretty liberal use of the swaying motion. Or the leaning tower stage in Castlevania Bloodlines.

https://youtu.be/hNxT2XGcfec?t=5m31s

rawhide · Jun 2, 2019

lazygecko said:
This demo works by streaming the whole level as a singular bitmap image (as opposed to being constructed out of tiles). It works but also means it's prohibitively expensive in terms of storage space. I believe the demo used a 1024x1024 bitmap which by itself is a full 16mbit cartridge, so the tech would not have been feasible in practice with the ROM budgets of the early to mid 90s.

That's one technique, but he also has it working with equivalent quality using the external 64k SRAM present on flashcarts, which I think would have been a more feasible enhancement back in the day.

VG Aficionado · Jun 2, 2019

Since Red Zone is mentioned and I never knew about it, I checked a video on Youtube and I instantly realised about the similarities with Sub-Terrania, a game I loved! Developed by the same people (Zyrinx), both games share the same sound effects, music style, text font, map features, etc.

Dragon1893 · Jun 2, 2019

VG Aficionado said:
Since Red Zone is mentioned and I never knew about it, I checked a video on Youtube and I instantly realised about the similarities with Sub-Terrania, a game I loved! Developed by the same people (Zyrinx), both games share the same sound effects, music style, text font, map features, etc.

Man, sub-terrania was the only mega drive game that I played and couldn't beat.

VG Aficionado · Jun 2, 2019

Dragon1893 said:
Man, sub-terrania was the only mega drive game that I played and couldn't beat.

Really? I think it had an easy mode too. The controls were great, very precise inertia and gravity physics for the time.

The last three stages were crazy and harder, but very cool.

Dragon1893 · Jun 2, 2019

VG Aficionado said:
Really? I think it had an easy mode too. The controls were great, very precise inertia and gravity physics for the time.

The last three stages were crazy and harder, but very cool.

There was a level where you had to go through acid and I could never make it to the other side in time. I must've missed something but I could never figure it out. Not like I could check the internet either lol. I should watch a playthrough on YouTube, I think it was level 9 (I'll be blown away if that's accurate considering it's been 25 years...)

Lupin · Jun 2, 2019

VG Aficionado · Jun 2, 2019

Dragon1893 said:
There was a level where you had to go through acid and I could never make it to the other side in time. I must've missed something but I could never figure it out. Not like I could check the internet either lol. I should watch a playthrough on YouTube, I think it was level 9 (I'll be blown away if that's accurate considering it's been 25 years...)

Yeah, I think the acid parts were in levels 7 and 8. I don't think it took more than a bit of skill to beat them, I'm not sure if it could be something else.

If it was level 9 (I think there was no acid in it), there's a change in the refuel mechanic that you might have missed, as you basically need to obtain a nuclear cell at the beginning and then you go on to beat the game without worrying about refueling again. I suppose the final stage can't be cleared without it in any case.

Dragon1893 · Jun 2, 2019

VG Aficionado said:
Yeah, I think the acid parts were in levels 7 and 8. I don't think it took more than a bit of skill to beat them, I'm not sure if it could be something else.

If it was level 9 (I think there was no acid in it), there's a change in the refuel mechanic that you might have missed, as you basically need to obtain a nuclear cell at the beginning and then you go on to beat the game without worrying about refueling again. I suppose the final stage can't be cleared without it in any case.

I just remember not being able to get through a submerged section in time, not sure if it was acid or running out of fuel.

The physics were well done though, it was really unique in the way it controlled.

Anyway, back on topic, if I had to pick the moments that stand out the most for me in terms of being blown away by graphics on the Mega Drive, I'll have to with Toy Story, followed by Earthworm Jim and Vectorman. I was also really impressed with Sonic 3 when it launched, really love how that game looks. The first Sonic really stood out from the crowd when it launched as well.

Barn · Jun 2, 2019

Wow, Panorama Cotton and Ranger-X are stunning.

Also, watching this video I learned that I have no idea how to control Alien Soldier (tried it for the first time on the Genesis Classics Collection the other day).

Shaneus · Jun 2, 2019

VG Aficionado said:
Since Red Zone is mentioned and I never knew about it, I checked a video on Youtube and I instantly realised about the similarities with Sub-Terrania, a game I loved! Developed by the same people (Zyrinx), both games share the same sound effects, music style, text font, map features, etc.

Dragon1893 said:
Man, sub-terrania was the only mega drive game that I played and couldn't beat.

Aw yiss, more Sub-Terrania love. Love to see it make an appearance on the Classic, more people need to know about this game.

Not necessarily technically impressive though, save for the intro which I loved... but even that was trumped by the Red Zone intro.

Edit: As for the most impressive for me, I'd obviously have to rank Toy Story, Batman and Robin, and Virtua Racing, even Sonic 3D Blast... if only for that FMV intro. Nothing else really springs to mind, though.

rawhide · Jun 2, 2019

Lupin said:
I remember hearing that Mega Drive was third place in sales in Japan, after Super Famicom and PC-Engine/TG16. If that's true, and I'm not positive that it was, I could see why they didn't prioritize it, since it would only really be selling to the Western markets instead of both in their home turf and abroad on SFC.

That's true enough, and in Konami's case they also came to that market relatively late--Hyperstone Heist and Sunset Riders were their first Mega Drive games and they were released at the end of 1992, four years after the MD launched in Japan.

As it happens, the team that became Treasure quit Konami because they wanted to make a Mega Drive game and were told no, only for Konami to start making MD games pretty much immediately after those guys left.

HyperDimension · Jun 2, 2019

The following Mega Drive games were doing 3D polygons on the base hardware without any enhancement chips:

Star Cruiser
Hard Drivin'
Race Drivin'

Fukuzatsu · Jun 2, 2019

Dark1x said:
Yeah, it sucks. I've been trying to get a copy of that and Vampire Killer and I've had to give up. It's just not possible without dropping an insane amount of cash. Really annoying situation.

I assume it's the result of low popularity of the system + late release.

There are tons of Japanese Mega Drive games that will run your wallet out of business:
Sparkster: Rocket Knight Adventures 2
Surging Aura
Eliminate Down
Pulseman

An 'expensive' game can be anywhere from 200 USD (an actually very good deal) to 500 or more. It's just a shame so many are actually really cool games.

Poimandres · Jun 2, 2019

Dark1x said:
That's right. As someone that can 1cc Contra 3 on normal (and still finish on hard), I find The Hard Corps US version to be insanely annoying. I've finished it before but barely - it's wayyyyy more difficult and less fun to replay as a result. The Japanese version is a lot more enjoyable for me.

How does the European version compare? I rented it back in the day and it was pretty damn hard.

rawhide · Jun 3, 2019

Poimandres said:
How does the European version compare? I rented it back in the day and it was pretty damn hard.

The difficulty's the same as the US version, IIRC.

IronicSonic · Jun 3, 2019

lazygecko said:
You can do it in software, although far from as efficiently of course.

This demo works by streaming the whole level as a singular bitmap image (as opposed to being constructed out of tiles). It works but also means it's prohibitively expensive in terms of storage space. I believe the demo used a 1024x1024 bitmap which by itself is a full 16mbit cartridge, so the tech would not have been feasible in practice with the ROM budgets of the early to mid 90s.

A lot of existing games manage "Mode7"-esque effects through other means that are more limited in scope but on the flip side don't suffer from the exact same technical limitations of Mode7 itself (mainly not having to sacrifice an entire background layer to achieve the effect). I think the most common is the swaying effect on backgrounds or large sprites by displacing/distorting them on a tile-by-tile basis. You can only sway the objects so far before it stops making sense visually compared to true rotation, but on the other hand I'd say it arguably looks better than true hardware rotation for what it's trying to do since you don't get the same kind of pixel artifacts from it.

Chuck Rock 2 for example makes pretty liberal use of the swaying motion. Or the leaning tower stage in Castlevania Bloodlines.

https://youtu.be/hNxT2XGcfec?t=5m31s

Far better than the fake mode 7 used in Street Racer.

Great video. Those are the usual suspects of genesis hardware pushers. Id swap Aladdin with Vectorman though

Blizniak · Jun 4, 2019

Thanks for highlighting this video series OP, great stuff.

10 Mega Drive (Genesis) games that pushed hardware limits (Best Graphics)

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