Games that showcased the Genesis's power

[TheCoolinator]

Hi all,

Kind of new here to the forums and just recently got back into my retro-consoles. A little while ago I got the chance to pop in some Earthworm Jim, Primal Rage, and a few other little gems that I've held on to since the Genesis has came out.

Wondering what games you feel showcase the power of the Genesis.

Mine choices would be,

1. Earthworm Jim
2. Contra: hardcorps
3. Rocket Knight Adventures
4. Thunder Force 4
5. Streets of Rage 3

[Getta Robo]

I'd say the two Vectorman games.
Jurassic park: Lost world probably following.

[TheCoolinator]

^ Completely forgot about the vectorman games. Good point.

[TmEE]

Adventures of Batman & Robin
Contra Hard Corps / Probotector
Gunstar Heroes
Thunder Force IV
Vectorman 2

[f2bnp]

Gunstar Heroes
Zero Tolerance
Red Zone
Sonic 3

[oli_lar]

Well MD not Genesis, but Pulseman is a fantastic looking & playing game.

[l_oliveira]

That mickey game which had the moose chase was pretty amazing ! And it looked like an SNES game ! (just had less colors but it had all the MODE7 stuff) Amazing coding do that with the 68000 horsepower instead of cheating with hardware acceleration ! :lol:

[emu_kidid]

Sonic & Knuckles
Gunstar Heroes
Streets of Rage 3

[ccovell]

That mickey game which had the moose chase was pretty amazing ! And it looked like an SNES game ! (just had less colors but it had all the MODE7 stuff) Amazing coding do that with the 68000 horsepower instead of cheating with hardware acceleration ! :lol:

That moose part was not Mode7 since there was no realtime horizontal scaling. It's just using line-scrolling for vertical scaling as most systems including the NES, Turbografx, GameBoy, etc can do. The horizontal "scaling" is basically a stored background pattern (ie, prerendered) being scrolled by the Gen's VDP. So basically you're not seeing 68000 horsepower so much as VDP scroll lists.

Look at V-Rally for the GB(C), or Street Racer for various systems for an identical scrolling effect. The CPU is not sweating very much to achieve this effect, believe me.

[l_oliveira]

That moose part was not Mode7 since there was no realtime horizontal scaling. It's just using line-scrolling for vertical scaling as most systems including the NES, Turbografx, GameBoy, etc can do. The horizontal "scaling" is basically a stored background pattern (ie, prerendered) being scrolled by the Gen's VDP. So basically you're not seeing 68000 horsepower so much as VDP scroll lists.

Look at V-Rally for the GB(C), or Street Racer for various systems for an identical scrolling effect. The CPU is not sweating very much to achieve this effect, believe me.

Pre-rendered ? That's interesting ! I didn't knew it worked that way...

[Getta Robo]

Check Alien Soldier as well. Unfortunately, it had limited release, it was released only in Japan and Europe :(

[randyrandall]

Mickey Mania I believe. It was also released on the Playstation as I remember.. Very impressive graphically in many ways.

[SONIC3D]

-Contra hard corps[BGM Music, H/V line scrolling and obj scale,great blow effect and sound fx]

-Gunstar Heroes[BGM Music and H line scrolling and level design]

-Yuu Yuu Hakusho - Makyou Toitsusen[Music,Multi-PCM mixing,H line scrolling in scene and H/V scrolling in option and menu BG]

-Red Zone[Too much,nice music and software full screen rotating/scaling is the highlight]

-Toy Story[One of the best sample game of H scrolling used,the emulation of toy car physics even better than Micro Machines.And the most important,one of the level features the full screen 3D graphic maze which is not implemented in any of the other 3D maze type games on genesis.]

-Zero Tolerance[3D fps with SYSTEM LINK feature,communicate two console through 2P port]

-Sonic 3 & Knuckles[Great BGM engine and Lock-on tech applied]

-Streets of Rage 2 and Shinobi III[Nice BGM]

-Micro Machine Serie[Great toy car physics simulation and the J-Cart system]

-Adventures of Batman & Robin[One of the best sample game of H scrolling used,and music is great,too.Zyrinx style.Super hard and super long game play =$ ]

-Thunder Force IV[H Scrolling and hard music]

-Gley Lancer[H Scrolling and hard music,too.Classic game of NCS]

-Langrisser II[BGM is great,and same to the character design.Another classic of NCS]

-Landstalker[2.5D view A RPG]

-Light Crusader[2.5D view A RPG with puzzle adventure]

-Monster World IV[Not much tech used but fantastic graphics and fullfilled story.]

-OutRunners[One of the best 2D depth in racing game.Great FM Music]

-Phantasy Star IV[Story is great,but less tech used]

-Ristar[Not much tech used.But graphics and level design makes the game play excellent]

-Rocket Knight Adventures[Just like Ristar]

-Romance of the Three Kingdoms III[If you know history of Chinese,this one would be the best Sangokushi game on Genesis/MD.Well balanced.]

-Romance of the Three Kingdoms IV 32X[Better than the RoT III on genesis,and even better,the graphics pallete may be the best one in 32X]

-Sonic 3D Blast[Almost full screen of title CG animation,2.5D action game]

-Super Street Fighter II - The New Challengers[Cart can be lager than 32Mbit on Genesis.This is the provement.By using Rom Banking,this game is 40MBit.The biggest one of the official genesis release.And this game is also one of the best in Street Fighter 2 serie]

-Surging Aura[Great 2D RPG game play and graphics]

-Tiny Toon Adventures - Acme All-Stars[Greatest cartoon sports game on genesis I think.Handling is perfect]

-Virtua Racing[S.V.P chip used for hardware assisted 3D graphic rendering.But personally I suggest playing Virtua Racing Deluxe on 32X]

-Xin Qi Gai Wang Zi(Begger Prince)[One of the best unlicensed RPG game by Chinese at mid-90s,featuring semi-realtime battling system and greate RPG story line.]

-Crusader of Centy[Excellent A-RPG,even better than Zelda]

-Beyond Oasis[Another Classic A-RPG legend]

-Cool Spot[Fun action game by CORE]

-Comix Zone[Comic style level design.]

-ECCO The Dolphin[New game play style and nice music]

-Flashback and Out of this World[Vector graphics design]

-Lost Vikings[yeah,an great action/adventure game by Blizzard]

-Dragon Ball Z - Buyuu Retsuden[Fighting game with split-screen]

-Dyna Brothers 2[Great RTS game on MD]

-Mercs[The original mode is totolly rocks,even better than arcade version]

[Dr.Wily]

Very intresting topic. ANd for the 32x Sega-CD ? For Sega-CD games use the Genesis.

- Sylpheed : mixed FM/PCM musics + good pre-rendered graphics (not too dithered)

- Dune : nice FMV + clear PCM voice + very good
FM music

- Popful Mail : one of the best technical use of Gen/scd hardware. Mixed FM/PCM music, nice H scroll, and one of the best tile based cut scenes.

- Lunar 2 : prety good streamed PCM music and like Popful Mail very nice cut scene.

- Sonic CD :good PCM music, nice H scroll and FMV.

[jammanutz]

i remember when it fisrst game out, and a lot of shops were showing it running Afterburner, which totally blew me away!

[ASSEMbler]

Panorama cotton had nice mode 7 type effects.

[Alchy]

Check Alien Soldier as well. Unfortunately, it had limited release, it was released only in Japan and Europe :(That would be my pick as well. You'll forget you're playing a Megadrive.

Last I checked it was still going for >£60 on ebay, unfortunately.

[MottZilla]

You could buy it on the Wii Virtual Console if you can't get it elsewhere.

[APE]

I can't believe this hasn't been mentioned yet but Eternal Champions. Can't remember what trick it was but it had something like a doubled on screen palette? Looked amazing.

[Segafreak_NL]

I can't believe this hasn't been mentioned yet but Eternal Champions. Can't remember what trick it was but it had something like a doubled on screen palette? Looked amazing.

Yeah, the SEGA-CD version used a palette trick for 256 colours.

[segaloco]

Yeah, the SEGA-CD version used a palette trick for 256 colours.
TmEE actually found out that the Mega Drive was capable of displaying up to 960 colours. Dunno if anyone in the professional field even came close to that, but seemed like some pretty interesting stuff.

http://www.hot.ee/tmeeco/DWNLOADS/960PAL.RAR

[l_oliveira]

That's not true 960 colors. It's a trick with the TV.

I remember people doing that with the Amiga and even on the MSX.

And 4096 colors on an MSX2 is impressive lol (but blinks a lot) :lol:

[TmEE]

there's 1536 colors possible on MD, but in practice lot of colors overlap so its probably about ~1200.

You can get 15 shade(not 16) greyscale out of MD with S/HL

[jammanutz]

i remember been blown away seeing Afterburner running in a shop window in leeds!

[everett1911]

Adventures of Batman and Robin
Red Zone
Gunstar Heroes
Vectorman 1&2
Rocket Knight Adventures (kudos to konami for using the reflection effect on the lava as a gameplay element)
Contra: Hard Corps

[port187]

Aladdin was quite impressive, especially compared to the SNES version.

[Kjell]

Couple of games that have not been mentioned yet.

F1 World Championship ( 1993 )
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qofonsN3Nwc

Ranger X ( 1993 )
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5titrqe43w4

[BackHome]

Shinobi 3 : Return on the Ninja Master!
The level where Musashi rides the horse was soo good & thrilling !, that you could feel the depth of the far away mountains, the eerie dark clouds, the green swampy fields, the kite ninjas and the chilling wind!
Kick ass level design & game play!! :nod:
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_EXgDI8DeN_E/RvbuBwnfs1I/AAAAAAAABD8/rGOBFzCFIJc/s400/Shinobi+3+-+Return+of+the+Ninja+Master+%28U%29+%5B%21%5D_002. jpg

[TmEE]

that stage makes me laugh all the time... those ninjas run so damn fast, hahaha

[BackHome]

that stage makes me laugh all the time... those ninjas run so damn fast, hahaha
lol:lol:,
Forgot to tell about the background soundtracks!.. Love the electric bass in that!! Hail Yuzo Koshiro!

[Druid II]

Streets of Rage 2 had surprisingly detailed backgrounds for a 1992 game, and also huge and well animated sprites.
Also, one of the levels had a rotating background, the pirate ship with the ninjas. That's one of the few Megadrive games that rotated backgrounds SNES style, and did it in-game and not on a title screen logo or so.


That's not true 960 colors. It's a trick with the TV.

I remember people doing that with the Amiga and even on the MSX.

And 4096 colors on an MSX2 is impressive lol (but blinks a lot) :lol:

No, it's not a TV trick. You can change the palette between scanlines to display all 512 colors the Megadrive has on one screen, plus you can display all of those colors in 3 way: normal, Shadow, Highlight.

That gives you 1536 colors total, but a lot of those end up as dupes of each other. The actual color count on the 1536 color demo is 1408.

As for games that used this, any games using shadow/highlight, or raster effects (to change palette mid-screen) could easily push past 64 colors. Ranger X (the lightbeams on stage 2 and 5), Sonic (water levels), Vectorman, and so on.

[TmEE]

The Shadow/Highlight gives less colors than 1408, no emulator currently emulates highlight correctly, but future version of Kega Fusion and Gens/GS should. No idea if PicoDrive already does or not or Genesis Plus GX...

[Druid II]

I'm curious, what is emulated wrong?

[TmEE]

White is made whiter, and together with shadow you get 16 grey tones, while in reality you got 15 of them as white does not get whiter. Highlight steps start on the same shades as last Shadow step. Most emulators use also use RGB step of 32 for MD colors, which gets 224 as the white value, then highlight value for white is 255... but step of 36 should be used instead, and in case of shadow and highlight, 18 aswell...

Normal : 0, 36, 72, 108, 144, 180, 216, 252
Shadow : 0, 18, 36, 54, 72, 90, 108, 126
Highlight : 126, 144, 162, 180, 198, 216, 234, 252

[s_d]

Red Zone, if we're talking about 3D. It also has a real video, though it has only two colors. Virtua Fighter and Virtua Racing, just look at them.
If we're talking about 2D power - Comix Zone, Contra: Hard Corps, Mr.Nutz, Daffy Duck In Hollywood, many titles from Treasure, etc. There's a lot of them.
Sonic 3D Blast, it also has full-colored FMV intro (looks really great) and whole game is just awesome (better than Saturn version IMHO).
Also there's was an unlicensed and absolutely unplayable Harry Potter. It has very qualitative PCM music and great pre-rendered 3D graphics, looks like some GBA game.

[Nano Babe]

I can't believe this hasn't been mentioned yet but Eternal Champions. Can't remember what trick it was but it had something like a doubled on screen palette? Looked amazing.

Eternal Champions cart version god that was a pixalated mess hang your head in shame sega america for releasing such a poor quality copy of street fighter 2 :banghead:

[H360]

s_d, you just bumped a post from 2010.

Anyway, I would have to say Sonic 2. Puts the console to its limit I think...

[z3ntn3l]

My List:

MD:
Alien Soldier
Comix Zone
Dynamite Headdy
Flashback
Gunstar Heroes
Probotector/Contra
Ranger X
Rocket Knight Adventures
Sonic 3
Streets of Rage 2/3
Shinobi 3
Vectorman 1/2

MCD:
Batman Returns (Racing Stages)
Silpheed
Snatcher :)
Thunder Hawk/Thunder Strike

32X:
Darxide
Metal Head
Virtua Racing Deluxe

[WSenna]

I think Speedball 2 was every bit as good on the MD as it was on the Amiga, the only things missing is the ice cream vendor when a player gets injured.

[Commodore64]

Aladdin was quite impressive, especially compared to the SNES version.


You bet! The Graphics (and Gameplay!) of Aladdin are awesome. Was my first Mega Drive Title back in the Day and I still play it today.