Coping with Nintendo fan boys/girls

[tomaitheous]

Again, barring interviews with the developers (or somehow getting our hands on development spec/design documents), I suppose we have no way of knowing if the lack (or poor quality) of animations in any particular game, whether FF or PS3 or whatever, was due to ROM space limitations or due to the developers just choosing not to bother with implementing them for whatever reason.

I doubt it was for 'whatever reason'. I mean, rom space was a huge deal back in the day. Bigger roms were coming out and always meant more content and/or animation/art. I can tell you with 100% certainty that it wasn't due to the programmers limited abilities. It takes waayyy more work and understanding to make even a simple game engine (even a pong clone) than it does to simply update vram with a new set of tiles. Graphics tiles always takes up the most space back in those days. Code space was relatively small. Music data as well. Sampled speech took up a lot, but that's why it was rarely or sparsely used until CD systems came around. Other assets like maps and such took up a lot of space as well (meta tiles to save on space, but you lose potential detail). If an enemy took a total of 5 frames and you managed to design the animation where some parts were redundant, you're still looking at something like 3x the amount of space of a still character. Given the same size rom, that means you need to cut about 2-3 unique enemies out of the roster to support those frames - in place of that one animating enemy. Developers used palette swaps to extend the number of enemies specifically because of rom space (or CDRAM). In the context of these old systems. Palette swaps take about 32bytes (uncompressed) compared to 512bytes-2048bytes or more per character art. Having done development for these old systems, I can tell you that the biggest asset space wise is going to be graphics (cells/tiles, bitmaps, etc). But for RPGs, script alone can take a LOT of rom space (having worked on hacking/translation projects first hand). Second to graphics assets, if not more in some games (even when the script is compressed).

But I agree with you. Animating enemies were a nice touch, but if they had to cut corners but still leave stuff in - they should have at least done some animated bosses (8 and 16bit generations). I did play PS2 (and PS3) when they came out. But when I played FF2us and FF3us, the lack of animation on the enemies was the last thing I was thinking about. Those games blew me away back then. And I wasn't a die hard snes fan either (I had nes, tg16CD/Duo, Genesis systems as well at the same time). I actually like FF2us over FF3us. If you wanted animating enemies in an RPG, you usually played action-RPGs or action-adventure games. But if you look at PS series, that was a Sega developed series. It always seems like Sega themselves were trying to make some sort of distinction between their games/console VS the competitor (mainly Nintendo, but PCE early on). Matter of fact, PS series is the only one that stands out in my memories of traditional jRPGs with such animation (i.e. excluding action-RPGs type segments). What other ones had the equivalent animation of PS2/4 on the Genesis? (PS3 doesn't count).

[Dragonmaster Lou]

Okay, I should clarify that "whatever reason" simply implied a reason other than ROM space limitations. It could be anything else, including development deadlines, shoddy developers, hardware limitations, cosmic rays corrupting the animation code, whatever. In the case of the SNES vs. Genesis argument though, the most likely factor is probably indeed ROM limitations, with also the possibilities of deadlines and shoddy programming (given the large number of RPGs on the SNES, at least some of them have to have been shovelware RPGs, although I agree that the RPGs developed by A-list developers are highly unlikely to have been shoddily programmed).

I also came up with the idea that one potential cause of ROM space limitations unique to the SNES that would not apply to the Genesis may be due to the SNES's sound chip. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that digitized samples require more ROM space than FM instruments.

I'll generally defer to your expertise on developing on these systems as I've never really had to do any serious development on any sort of massively resource-limited systems, so I'm not quite as familiar as you may be with the corners that have to be cut out of necessity.

Funny that you should mention you were blown away by FF2us and FF3us. When I got around to playing them (admittedly years after I've played my Genesis RPGs), I was underwhelmed at first, at least by the graphical technology, after hearing them hyped up as such technical masterpieces for years. After I started playing them for a while, though, I got past the underwhelming (in my opinion) graphical technology and did appreciate them more for things such as plot, the combat system, etc.

Lunar did have animated enemies, but it was a CD-based game, so we'll leave it out going forward as it obviously wouldn't have the same ROM limitations (yes, the RAM is limited, but I believe the Sega CD had more RAM available than either the SNES or the Genesis, so it still may not be a fair comparison). As far as other, non-action jRPGs on the Genesis that had animated enemies and date back to its golden era, there was the Shining Force series, Shining Force, Traysia, and Warsong/Langrisser (though the sprites were pretty tiny and not that well animated here). This is just based on a quick search and my personal experience in playing some of these games.

Part of the issue is the relative dearth of jRPGs on the Genesis as opposed to the SNES though. It's hard to even find a list of "classic" non-action Genesis RPGs, let alone to figure out if they had animated enemies or not.

[Lync]

Ultimate Solution:

[Moirai]

Ultimate Solution:

I have no clue whats going on in that picture, but i like it.

[negative chill]

Ultimate Solution:

Are those the girls from Trouble Shooter/Battle Mania?

[midnightrider]

She really hates that thing.

[Dirt Ball Gamer]

wHAAAT??!^ How do u get that intro? Code?

[midnightrider]

Japanese version only. Hold C on controller 2, I guess.

[FuturePrimitive]

Are those the girls from Trouble Shooter/Battle Mania?

That was a clever reference, Lync! Awesome artwork. Never knew about that secret intro. Too good.

[midnightrider]

These Sega vs. Nintendo threads are the last type I ever want to bump back up, but I always wanted to mention this video, but forget how to find it.



All the "superiority" in the world doesn't mean jack shit to having memories like that.

[Splatterhouse5]

I've honestly never had a gaming conversation with a Nintendo fanboy. The vast majority of gamers that I've met through the years are actually very open-minded when it comes to games. For the most part, it was just as easy for me to get gaming buddies to play games like You're in the Movies, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Scene it, Sonic All-Star Racing, Guitar Hero, Mario platformers, Pac-Man Championship Ed DX, Guilty Party, Castle Crashers, etc., as it was to collaboratively play games like COD, Soul Calibur, SSX, Borderlands, Halo, and Resident Evil.

I don't personally know anyone that goes out of their way for retro gaming, but it is usually met with interest when I bring it up. I have met gamers that don't care much for Nintendo, but i have to go on the internet to see actual disdain towards Nintendo. What I actually hear in everyday life is moderate indifference towards Nintendo, although they'll certainly give it a shot if you present the opportunity to them.

[BoostedGR33K]

These Sega vs. Nintendo threads are the last type I ever want to bump back up, but I always wanted to mention this video, but forget how to find it.



All the "superiority" in the world doesn't mean jack shit to having memories like that.

Wow.... thanks for sharing...thats a great story. Pretty powerful really...

[WarmSignal]

Never met a Nintendo fanboy, only Nintendo haters. The only fanboys I deal with are Steam and Apple. Steam >>>> everything! The give steep discounts! Free 2 play! With keeping hardware up-to-snuff, they better be offering steep discounts. And Apple, ooh, glorious Apple... Simply the best, because it's Apple! Infallible Apple. Everything else makes my head hurt cuz I can't figure it out. Whyz it not like Apple?

[zetastrike]

I posted this in the Saturn thread today, but it's more relevant here

So I was playing this board game called Topple or something with my friends last night. You have pick a category and name things in it according to the alphabet within a time limit. It was my turn to pick a category and I wanted the point for the round, so I told them to name Saturn games. Them being Nintendo gouches, they all groaned and one of them (basically Derek from CGR only fat) said "Does the Saturn even have 26 games?" Once we started playing, one of them named Nights, the fat kid named "the sonic racing game", the other one said "M. Bison", and on the last turn the fat kid said "Bubsy". I won and he added "When I think Sega games, I think Bubsy." This is the current generation of gamers, people. Stupid nintendrones.

[sull56ivan2010]

Never seen one in real life, but there a lot of those Nintendo losers on YouTube and other websites.