Hardware pushed to the limits according to Sega-16 members

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Jazz Jackrabbit needs a 33MHz CPU and 4MB of RAM, and it still manages to flicker the damn sun sprite somehow

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Jackrabbit. I remember! Thanks.

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Originally Posted by Kamahl

The arcade card has so much ram that it is a major upgrade. You can use CD data way more effectively that way, not that any games really did. I mean, Mad Stalker loads THE ENTIRE GAME into it at the start. That's just how much RAM it is (though it also means Mad Stalker is totally doable on a 16 meg PCE hucard)

The PCE reads ROM at the same speed as RAM, so no advantage there. The SNES is actually slower at reading RAM then ROM for some stupid reason.

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Don't forget the part about being able to use the arcade card as extra RAM. Especially if it's used as a buffer to decompress stuff. Mad Stalker may be using it that way too and that'd mean that as a hucard it'd need to include both ROM and RAM if that's the case (which would have been more expensive).

Also having more memory available could make it possible to store data in a more performance friendly way than keeping it tight packed on the PCE's internal RAM.


Anyway, back to the original subject (skip to 0:32):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o63AkoXtTbU

It seems to be entirely built out of sprites (large blocks being 4 sprites). Probably explains why they had to reduce the viewport, to avoid running heavily into sprite limits.

I believe Sonic 1's special stages are a clear rip-off of Cameltry. Even the background themes, the fishes, all the stuff is so "inspired" by it.

Sonic 1 uses an even more limited set of sprites (actually it's all the same quad) combined with circular forms it never actually "rotate". But the principle seems to be pretty much the same. And the effect is convincing enough IMO.

By the way, there's also Cameltry for the FM Towns:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPL1DfIcMHY

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Originally Posted by Sik

Don't forget the part about being able to use the arcade card as extra RAM. Especially if it's used as a buffer to decompress stuff. Mad Stalker may be using it that way too and that'd mean that as a hucard it'd need to include both ROM and RAM if that's the case (which would have been more expensive).

Also having more memory available could make it possible to store data in a more performance friendly way than keeping it tight packed on the PCE's internal RAM.

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Tom has described why the ram in the Arcade Card is no good for that kind of stuff (too slow?). I believe that the System 3.0 card ram is the only one which is viable to use for decompressing, but that it's still more of an efficiency thing for making the most out of the limited space CD games have to work with. He's bottom-lined it many times that even Sapphire can be done 100% on HuCard, minus redbook and adpcm. It's still interesting hearing about all of the ways developers worked around the constraints, like using the adpcm memory to store assets.

There is a single "ROMRAM" HuCard (Populous) which has a bit of ram in it. I forget the details of what some of the experts have said about it, but I believe that it was just used to make it easier for the developer to port the game. I don't think that it retailed for too much, so it probably wasn't worthwhile for most cases.

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Originally Posted by Barone

I believe Sonic 1's special stages are a clear rip-off of Cameltry. Even the background themes, the fishes, all the stuff is so "inspired" by it.

Sonic 1 uses an even more limited set of sprites (actually it's all the same quad) combined with circular forms it never actually "rotate". But the principle seems to be pretty much the same. And the effect is convincing enough IMO.

By the way, there's also Cameltry for the FM Towns:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPL1DfIcMHY

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What about the hidden "smoother" version of the Sonic bonus stages, what was the deal with that? Was there a reason they didn't keep it smooth in the released version?

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Originally Posted by Black_Tiger

What about the hidden "smoother" version of the Sonic bonus stages, what was the deal with that? Was there a reason they didn't keep it smooth in the released version?

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The only thing I can come up with is that maybe they thought it would be somewhat disturbing to look at, 'cause the sprite data was already there. The "smoother" hack is the simply removal of like two lines of code holding it back.

Personally, I think it looks way cooler in the smoother version but I don't know which was the thought process. It doesn't seem to be a technical decision.

I never heard of this so called magical Sonic 1 bonus level hack that removes a holding back code, of all things. So good to know.

Sonic 1 in special stages intentionally discards the bottom part of the current angle to make the rotation look coarse. I always thought it may have been done to make it easier to move around (it's already hard enough as it is).

Note that the sprite data for the in-between angles is not there, it just happens to not look as bad as you'd expect (probably because the smoother motion tends to hide the sudden transitions). Note that it could look better by having it round to nearest rather than rounding down, reducing issues when the board rotated too far away from the existing steps (indeed, it would halve the maximum error), but for some reason I haven't seen any hack bother with it yet (and it's quite jarring once you notice it).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MKByhhm_S4

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Originally Posted by Barone

I didn't forget. The first video posted was from WinUAE emulator which is not a good parameter for any judgement in terms of performance.

The stock Amiga 500 was the most common setup and that's what is used in the video I shared.
TA said he had an A600, but if it was a stock setup it should run pretty much like on a stock A500.

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I had the Amiga 600 with 1 MB of Ram and there were many Amiga games that did run better or having more effects thanks to the extra Ram or some that wouldn't work at all with out the 1Mb. Manchester United Europe was one of the games I had that looked better thanks to 1 MB of Ram , First Samurai had more FX . There's most tons of Amiga games that look or sound better than to extra Ram . And as a ZX Spectrum 128k+ owner one could see that games like Renergade was better .

But I long since thrown out those set ups

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Originally Posted by Barone

I didn't forget. The first video posted was from WinUAE emulator which is not a good parameter for any judgement in terms of performance.

The stock Amiga 500 was the most common setup and that's what is used in the video I shared.
TA said he had an A600, but if it was a stock setup it should run pretty much like on a stock A500.




This is a very good point. And that's why I don't like the emulated longplay videos, they paint an image about the performance of the games which may be very different from what they actually shown back in the days.

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While I get the point of both of you are saying, unless you are like Lazy Game Reviews or Roadgeek or whatever, finding old computers is not exactly a piece of cake. I want to get an old Windows 95 or 98 computer, but honestly, I have my concerns on whether or not those damn things would work well hardware wise.

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Originally Posted by Barone

Another game I always advocate in threads like this is Rapid Racer (1997) (a.k.a. Turbo Prop Racing) for the PS1.
60 fps, 15 AI-controlled vehicles, high vertical resolution, some good lighting and solid geometry for PS1 standards. Yeah, there's obvious trade-offs in the amount of details the tracks have and the noticeable clipping, but it delivers good arcade gameplay and speed sensation IMO.

It's hard to find decent captures of this game on YT, so I'll go with this lukemorse video because he knows how to actually play the game. I'd recommend watching the final segment of the video, starting at 15:25:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17fc8oPNkiM

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That does look impressive for a PS1 game, especially the water. My only problem is that the freaking guy recorded his screen with a camera! UGH!. Just get a capture card already! :p

I have a capture device, but it won't record anything under 640 x 480 resolution. You need an upscaler like the XRGB Mini to upscale older consoles.

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Originally Posted by Team Andromeda

I had the Amiga 600 with 1 MB of Ram and there were many Amiga games that did run better or having more effects thanks to the extra Ram or some that wouldn't work at all with out the 1Mb. Manchester United Europe was one of the games I had that looked better thanks to 1 MB of Ram , First Samurai had more FX . There's most tons of Amiga games that look or sound better than to extra Ram . And as a ZX Spectrum 128k+ owner one could see that games like Renergade was better .

But I long since thrown out those set ups

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NY Warriors is an Amiga game that I have that uses 1meg.

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Originally Posted by Sik

Sonic 1 info

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Awesome info! Rep given.

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Originally Posted by Team Andromeda

I had the Amiga 600 with 1 MB of Ram and there were many Amiga games that did run better or having more effects thanks to the extra Ram or some that wouldn't work at all with out the 1Mb. Manchester United Europe was one of the games I had that looked better thanks to 1 MB of Ram , First Samurai had more FX . There's most tons of Amiga games that look or sound better than to extra Ram . And as a ZX Spectrum 128k+ owner one could see that games like Renergade was better .

But I long since thrown out those set ups

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I see, but I don't know if Robocop 3 had something prepared for RAM upgrades.
There's also the fact that not all 3D games on Amiga would benefit from CPU upgrades: http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=82952

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Originally Posted by sull56ivan2010

While I get the point of both of you are saying, unless you are like Lazy Game Reviews or Roadgeek or whatever, finding old computers is not exactly a piece of cake. I want to get an old Windows 95 or 98 computer, but honestly, I have my concerns on whether or not those damn things would work well hardware wise.

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Oh, I agree, it's just that you WinUAE is very inaccurate AFAIK, so you can't really judge frame rate by looking at how the game runs on it.
On top of that, that longplay channel really don't care to set the emulators they use accordingly; they still use outdated emulators for several systems, etc.

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Originally Posted by AggroSky

That does look impressive for a PS1 game, especially the water. My only problem is that the freaking guy recorded his screen with a camera! UGH!. Just get a capture card already! :p

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It runs in one of those funky PS1 resolution modes (368 x 480) but you can find captures form it, it's just that it take some time to get used to the controls and most of people doesn't seem to want to invest that time if you know what I mean (here's an example: www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLU31DB4Ziw).
Luke Morse's channel is cool though, he fixes PCBs, shows not-so-common games, etc. The off-screen capture thing used to bother me but I got used to it after a while. Some of the most informative channels and best gameplay videos you'll find don't use proper video capture.

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Originally Posted by gamevet

NY Warriors is an Amiga game that I have that uses 1meg.

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Never heard of this game before, looks interesting.

About extra Ram,"The Flash" in SMS was one of few game to use extra ram i dont know the objective. Except the musics (congratulations Jeroen Tel) it seems simple game IMO.

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Originally Posted by gamevet

NY Warriors is an Amiga game that I have that uses 1meg.

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I have that game too. They didn't show the rather... disturbing ending. Or rather it was disturbing after 2001.

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Originally Posted by segarule

About extra Ram,"The Flash" in SMS was one of few game to use extra ram i dont know the objective. Except the musics (congratulations Jeroen Tel) it seems simple game IMO.

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Isn't RAM added to ROM cart how Sonic 3 saves your save files? So maybe it's the same reason why The Flash has it too.