As a Sega Genesis gamer, do you care about stretched aspect ratio?

[Yohko16]

@Flygon: I suspected too that it was done to save on ROM space but still, it's sad, unless...

the game's artwork actually accounts for the aspect squish. And, presumably, in-battle sequences were deliberately drawn for that to also save on ROM.

By this you mean that the Shining Force games on Mega Drive (and Mega-CD?) have graphics made with 4:3 in mind? If so, then it's ok even if stretched pixels is stretched pixels and it's not ideal.

There are many Mega Drive adventure games/RPGs which run in 320x224 pixels such as the Phantasy Star games, Crusader of Centy (except the title screen lol) or Story of Thor so the Shining Force running in 256x224 clearly seems to be a measure to save on something.

[Black_Tiger]

Monster World IV is a great example of artwork/pixelart being the most important aspect of visuals. Even without formatting for 4:3, it's still one of the best looking 16-bit games.

[Yohko16]

@Black_Tiger: Monster World IV has great graphics, not doubt, and same goes for Monster World III but both would have looked better in 320x224 pixels. Having a wider field of view is naturally more pleasing to look at (but it don't need to be too wide either, a 4:3 shape is basically perfect) and using such resolution would have also meant better aspect ratio.

[Black_Tiger]

@Black_Tiger: Monster World IV has great graphics, not doubt, and same goes for Monster World III but both would have looked better in 320x224 pixels. Having a wider field of view is naturally more pleasing to look at (but it don't need to be too wide either, a 4:3 shape is basically perfect) and using such resolution would have also meant better aspect ratio.

Monster World IV would never have been greenlit for a 32+ meg cart. A switch to 320 wide res would result in a serious hit to the visuals with the loss of assets. A game like MWIV doesn't rely enough on dithering for that to be worth the trade off either.

If Sega had a market for gigabit cart games and a dramatically larger budget for artists and could afford longer dev times... then we would have had something similar to later Neo Geo games. There were many hard limits to games bitd and one of the most important things to keep in context is the period in which these games were made.

Daimakaimura for SuperGrafx doesn't look noticeably better than the Mega Drive version because of the higher resolution. It looks better because it came out later and they could budget in the bump in rom size, even with the more expensive PC Engine memory.

[Barone]

As a Sega Genesis gamer,

Sorry, Sega Mega Drive gamer here.

[Yohko16]

Monster World IV would never have been greenlit for a 32+ meg cart

It's true that this would have increased the cost but it wasn't necessary to go 32 meg, was it? What's the game's cart size anyway?

If Sega had a market for gigabit cart games and a dramatically larger budget for artists and could afford longer dev times... then we would have had something similar to later Neo Geo games

Maybe not late Neo Geo games lol, but obviously more things could have been done but it's the same with every systems.

Talking about cart size, there are numerous Mega Drive games which both run in 320x224 pixels and have beautiful and detailed graphics but I don't think that they use that big of carts? Ristar or Flink for examples.

Daimakaimura for SuperGrafx doesn't look noticeably better than the Mega Drive version because of the higher resolution

It only run in slightly higher resolution (336x224 pixels versus 320x224 for the Mega Drive version) and it has black bars at each side bringing the actual screen size to 320x224 pixels, same as Mega Drive

It looks better because it came out later and they could budget in the bump in rom size

Indeed. 8 meg versus 5 for the Mega Drive version already makes a noticeable difference in amount of graphic assets and animations.

[retronostalgia]

Using the dot clock info I linked to earlier ( http://pineight.com/mw/index.php?title=Dot_clock_rates ) I thought I'd have a go at calculating the exact theoretical aspect ratio.

Assuming 256x224 resolution: pixels are 8 relative "units" wide and 7 units tall; (256*8)/(224*7) = 1.306122449:1, or exactly(?) 3.918367347:3
Assuming 320x224 resolution: pixels are 32 units wide and 35 units tall; (320*32)/224*35) = this results in the same 1.306122449:1 or 3.918367347:3

Please correct me if I'm wrong here... is this the most pedantic take on these systems' native aspect ratios, or is it possible to go deeper?

[CkRtech]

Please correct me if I'm wrong here... is this the most pedantic take on these systems' native aspect ratios, or is it possible to go deeper?

I suppose you could go as deep into it as you would like to find a specific aspect ratio, but the CRT design allows for a bit of wiggle room.

Enjoying the discussion you guys are having. Sorry I didn't elaborate a bit more on the initial post explaining that I was referencing a stretch to 4:3 for 256 pixels vs 320 pixels rather than the partially assumed 4:3 to 16:9.

The initial video I did on aspect ratio was for the SNES and went into the stretch operation a bit more. I suppose I could have duplicated some of the talk in the Genesis video for the sake of a better explanation.

[Flygon]

@Flygon: I suspected too that it was done to save on ROM space but still, it's sad, unless...

By this you mean that the Shining Force games on Mega Drive (and Mega-CD?) have graphics made with 4:3 in mind? If so, then it's ok even if stretched pixels is stretched pixels and it's not ideal.

There are many Mega Drive adventure games/RPGs which run in 320x224 pixels such as the Phantasy Star games, Crusader of Centy (except the title screen lol) or Story of Thor so the Shining Force running in 256x224 clearly seems to be a measure to save on something.

Yeah, everything was perfectly accounted for.

Both Mega Drive titles are packed to the absolute rim. II especially. 2MBytes is not very much to play with for such a huge game.

The CD title uses the 256-wide mode, but I'm willing to forgive it for running on a low fiscal budget. And the effort required to convert the engine for 320-wide.

[Tripredacus]

I personally prefer everything to be in the proper aspect ratio. This also includes movies, so much so that I won't watch 4:3 content on a 16:9 display if it can be helped.

[derFunkenstein]

Not true.

Most SNES games for example have graphic assets made without taking 4:3 stretching into consideration. It's easy to spot with things supposed to be square or round and which end rectangle or oval on SNES but it's not only squares or rounds, it's everything which has wrong aspect ratio.

You missed a really important, key word here: Generally. Better living through pedantry though, I suppose.

I personally prefer everything to be in the proper aspect ratio. This also includes movies, so much so that I won't watch 4:3 content on a 16:9 display if it can be helped.

That's the right call. Makes me crazy. Some family members disagree. But that's OK. They're wrong. LOL

[Black_Tiger]

Yeah, everything was perfectly accounted for.

Both Mega Drive titles are packed to the absolute rim. II especially. 2MBytes is not very much to play with for such a huge game.

The CD title uses the 256-wide mode, but I'm willing to forgive it for running on a low fiscal budget. And the effort required to convert the engine for 320-wide.

It's more important to save space in a CD game than on a cart. Shining Force CD might not have the same large detailed portraits if it was in 320 wide res.

Sword Master for PC Engine is a well made Shining Force clone with detailed animated sprites in the action scenes. In order to do that with only 2 megs of space the map backgrounds are fairly basic and look like an average SFC JRPG.

[axel]

Monster World IV is a great example of artwork/pixelart being the most important aspect of visuals. Even without formatting for 4:3, it's still one of the best looking 16-bit games.

I never even realized it ran in the lower resolution mode, some of the best visuals on the Genesis. Are there many examples of the 320 mode actually making a difference? The obvious one I can think of is Samurai Shodown where the sprites are much more faithful to the arcade than the SNES version, but I have never really looked at what each game is using.

[smurdd]

Now I'm curious if anyone has made a list of all the games that account for the crt stretching so we can know which games to stretch and which to leave native.

[Thunderblaze16]

A 'Sega genesis gamer' name sounds tacky

Call me a MEGA DRIVE PLAYER