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Also worth noting how V-blank came in different sizes per platform for hardware performance sake, why DOS gaming was 320x200 and Genesis was 320x224, or how few platforms actually were 320x240 or 240p in the 90s till much later in the decade. Same for the 4:3 anamorphic stretch varying too, which was a pain in the ass with cross platform development lol. I tend to only refer to "background tiles" and instead say "sprite blocks" just to make sure there is no confusion between both units rather than say "tiles" for everything in statements.😉

What these do: Hide sloppy unoptimized code.

Why are you appologising to USA for calling it what it is??? It IS the Mega Drive. Might be better appologising to the rest of Australia for not pronouncing Sega like the rest of us!! 😂 No one here ever called it sayga, it was always seega. In Australia, we say it as we spell it!

I liked to call these and the ones on the NES helper chips...do a video about the NES ones if you haven't already?

I am so happy the algorithm finally brought me to your channel. It's a total gem! Watching through some past videos is leaving me with great regret...that I haven't seen this stuff before!

Good thing I didn't have a job when the Neo Geo was out or I would have spent all my money buying the latest KOF or Samuri Showdown games.

SF alpha 2 on SNES is really impressive I must say.

Other consoles: Cartridges are just games. Super Nintendo: Cartridges are actually expansion cards with a ROM on it.

Capcom was the source of so many headaches from early emulation...MMX2-3 took a lot of pain to figure out how to emulate in early SNES emulators. The worst, however, was all of the self-destructive DRM in Capcom arcade hardware...from the self-destruct batteries in some CPS-1 games (most notably, 3 Wonders), to the absurd XOR Table data in CPS-2 games that was literally encrypted and only solvable on the hardware because of a battery-RAM that held decryption keys. Anyone around from the early days of emulation will remember how much of an absolute revelation Callus and Final Burn Alpha were. Nowadays, you're probably using a MAME core in Retroarch for all arcade emu needs (aside from electro-mechanical, pinball, slots, and redemption equipment)...but back then, you had a dedicated emulator for CPS-1, CPS-2, and Neo Geo MVS. Hell, for a while, classic Taito arcade games didn't work correctly in Mame and you had to use the long-defunct RAINE. But..that's enough digression. Oops.

such a clear presentation)) thanks))

sooo goooood! thanks!)))

how about the granddaddy of enhancement chips, Konami would love to see a breakdown of these and what they do, system 16 has a full list of these but not much information

Thinking back on the Super-FX 1&2 chip they really could have just done a passthrough cart like Sonic & Knuckles rather than a chip for every single FX cart. People love to complain about upgrade modules like the 32X but the form factor is the most cost effective design, that was definitely what Sega should have done with their more expensive SVP chip as it was used only in one game total. Likely something the homebrew community will work out some day for both chips.😁 Sprite scaling & rotation is an underrated feature of Super-FX chips, always figured that would have allowed 2D sprite scaler arcade games to run on the SNES. Yoshi's Island alone is a real "tour de force" for sprite transform effects.😁 2:22 Always wondered about that since eventually everything has to go through the standard 2D pipeline of the platform, makes a lot of sense to use a frame buffer, and decently large one at that.🙂There wasn't much choice in not using a Super-FX for Doom, even consoles more powerful than the SNES later on struggled with sector engine performance. I guess that makes sense about the chip models differing like that, it isn't a cheap process designing and manufacturing a custom chip that it would be easier to just upgrade speed and ROM size afterwards. Too bad they couldn't "Moore's Law" it in hindsight, double both factors with each new model as that would have made the performance contrast more dramatic. 5:45 I was quite unimpressed with the SNES when I found out that even a launch title like Pilotwings needed a DSP chip. Such an odd thing to have the functionality but not the performance for it within one's stock hardware Ie. SNES Mode7* (requires DSP chip). Pretty cool those later day helper-chips, really pushed the limits of what a SNES cart could actually contain. I could see AI needing a boost given the slow CPU speed. That MSU1 Road Blaster port is pretty neat, never would have thought I'd see FMV on SNES after their CD-ROM project collapsed. Idk about developer "freedom", I heard some anecdotes about the difficulties of getting the publisher to even buy those extra chips.😉

So could the SA1 have removed the slowdown from Contra and Super G n G?

It's a bit of an odd statement saying that the use of co-chips is a better strategy then using expensive add-ons while Nintendo and Sony were working on developing an add-on for the SNES.

Never played Star Ocean or Tales of Phantasia, but they sound like great games. My favorite enhancement chip game, back in the day, was Doom. I know it's inferior to some other ports, but it has the music. Also it's what i had and spent many hours trying to beat it. Although it has a slow frame rate, it's still a technical achievement.

I kind of thought it would be a bit like the NES in terms of effects setup given one background layer only. Certainly had your work cut out for you on the TG-16 but at least everything was possible with the stock hardware. Certainly with NES and SNES flash carts it was a giant pain in the butt having to support all those helper-chips in the aftermath.

The 482 on screen color count of the TurboGrafx-16 is a bit of a misnomer when you consider the 9-bit RGB system palette as a whole not having a tremendous amount of color gradient range beyond what a 4bpp graphic can display individually. Yes it is much easier using 16-tile palettes and 16-sprite palettes than the measly 2+2 the Genesis offered just in asset management alone, but a 9-bit RGB system palette of 512 colors is a lot smaller than the SNES 15-bit RGB system palette of 32,768 possible colors. As a result it was a color system of diminishing returns collectively in the long run Ie. more individual palettes per bitmap but the contrast gradient range being equal to Genesis but less than SNES per individual graphic element. This is evident in live action or CGI based graphics on the TG-16 where it never looks rich enough in gradient quality to do the aesthetic justice and layering more colors together doesn't yield much improvement. Same sort of pitfall Sega CD FMV had with color count stacking creating only a moderate boost in gradient fidelity until the 32X. Even the Shadow & Highlight option on Genesis can only blend 4bpp-maximum graphics together rather than making 5bpp or higher quality because 512 colors only stretches so far. So collectively you're more likely to use the same colors and or shading values across more palettes than ever to use 482 individual colors at the same time, as there isn't enough color gradient contrast present in the system palette to do that effectively. Realistically you'll do graphics in the 256 color range seen on SNES or DOS-VGA which is a pretty good standard to match.🙂

2:01 Well it's not rotation but it is tilting which constitutes some movement in graphics terms, if the background didn't tilt the meshes and ground-dots would misalign and destroy the illusion that the 2D background was contiguous with the polygonal layer. Funny you mention tilting later so the commentary before is a little odd.🤔Admittedly you saw tilting more often on Genesis than SNES Ie. Mode 7-ish alternative, a couple good examples of the same setup on Genesis include the unreleased ResQ flying stages and GASEGA68k's S-F like demos. 6:00 Yeah that one is a funny Mode7 mistake as pretty much every 16-bit platform can do that effect and has in one form or another. I really love how Axelay actually used Mode7 as it makes for a good Boss-sprite enhancement effect imo. 10:22 Uses a lot of image space but it works, yeah quite boring heh. It almost looks like one could do the same thing with raycasting which would have allowed it to be non-looping. 11:00 I was quite keen to hear about that series as its been part of my 3D graphics evolution project. I would have been equally fooled too if I hadn't looked at a bunch of early 3D flight sim and golf games which I affectionately called "flat-land engines".😄 2D vector graphics Eg. Another World was something 16-bit platforms could run quick enough that it made for a good terrain landmark overlay system. Too bad they didn't think of the simple vertical gradient before Dragon View as Drakkhen does look rather plain in comparison.🙁 If you look around DOS games you'll find quite a few of that engine type Eg. Betrayal at Krondor being one of the last I think. I think the TMNT Mode 7 mistake mostly stems from looking at static screen shots more than video footage because when you see it in action there is no scaling size transition Ie. pixel shimmering artifact, it just switches scale fast and pans a bit.

“Shigeru Miyamoto needs no introduction” *proceeds to introduce him in great depth*

I've had my issues with John Carmack history Eg. SS Doom: and the Bagley Shutdown lol, but some very impressive lateral thinking on the part of Carmack there. It always was apparent to me that 16-bit consoles struggled with FPS games but I never would have guessed that is why SNES Wolf3D was so chunky. Personally I do kind of prefer big pixels over tiny windows.🙂

Add a games list to the timeline.

So, DL Starfox 2, Vortex... What are the names of all these game? Is Metal Combat FR any good?

Could a cart have more than one enhancement chip and use them both? I know the cost of each added chip would make a game even more expensive. But from a technical stand point, could it be done? Something else I've been thinking about, though I do realize there may not be a right answer. Back in the day, I kind of felt that the more games I've seen released on SNES with expansion chips, the more I wondered if Nintendo should have gone the 32X route, or maybe an SNES enhanced model (like Sega Neptune that had the 32X build-in) that was backwards compatible with the SNES original. I suppose people would be annoyed to have to throw out their original and buy the enhanced model, and the failure of the 32X add-on on Sega Genesis I think speaks for itself, so I can see why Nintendo didn't want to put their customer base through either of those situations. Another idea idea I had was what if each different enhancement chip was a separate lock on cart, like the Sega Genesis Sonic & Knuckles add-on. Or maybe, since Nintendo had already foreseen that the system would eventually need expansion, they could have designed the system to have an additional slot for system expansion chip carts, like the RAM expansion and battery backed RAM carts on the Sega Saturn. With this cart, maybe it could be expandable itself where you could buy each enhancement chip individually as they are released, add them to the enhancement cart, and manually switch between them with a build in switch. Older chips could be replaced with later revisioned chips of the same model, assuming they were backwards compatible. I suppose that if that was done, people would reuse their expansion carts with multiple games which would've lead to less sales of the expansion chips themselves, unless the carts themselves were priced well enough to cover the cost difference for all enhancement chip developers, it would have led to less revenue for R&D of future revisions of those same chips. But then I don't think Nintendo would want customers opening anything up and messing with the guts of anything. Eh, I don't know what the correct answer would have been if Nintendo could go back and do it again... or for that matter, going back to redesign the NES and it's expansions all over again. Maybe the NES could have been expandable to to the point where it could've use some of the same SNES enhancement chips in an 8-bit NES mode if needs be? I know the Super FX development started on the NES, but the developers were told by Nintendo to develop it for the SNES. So I wonder just how much they had to expand or change things to adapt it to the SNES, and how the NES counterpart compares to it.

wanted to like & sub, then you said snes instead of s-n-e-s.....

There's an AGENDA to make the Snes look slow and uncapable, saying that the Snes needs a chip for SFA2 for sprites decompression PROVES IT. SFA2 is an awful port, just compare it to Gundam E.D., half the size (16megs), SLOWROM, WAY BIGGER SPRITES, NO CHIPS, TRUE CPS2 GAMEPLAY, NO SLOWDOWNS, NO LOADINGS. And if we compare the Snes' processor to the Motorola 68K, knowing that the Motorola 68K runs at 1/4 of its possibilities when dealing with external memory (roms, meaning cartridge games) we find out that the Snes' one is even faster in SLOWROM, i mean the Sega Genesis' processor is the one slower than the Snes one cause this an issue featured in all Motorola 68K processors, it's only useful for internal things, the Snes processor has no latency, the "blast processing" hoax is over!, even so, none of the 16bits consoles were taken to their full capabilities, like Gizaha said, the guy who made the Killer Instinct arcade mega patch, CPS2 gameplay for Snes is easy. Fun fact!!!, the best Snes game technically wise are SLOWROM GAMES, like SUPER SMASH TV, GUNDAM E.D., SUPER ALESTE, TMNT TURTLES IN TIME, FLYING HERO, FIREPOWER 2000, RENDERING RANGER, ETC, NO CHIPS IN THESE ONES!!!, DEUS BENEDICAT TIBI.

I wonder if an SNES homebrew developer could combine two (or even more, but I doubt that) of many said chips in the video for a project? I want to see how possible it is to overclock the hell out of this system with these chips.

Why did you choose to not specifically talk about "Tengai Makyō Zero: Far East of Eden" and its use of the Real Time Clock, plus the SPC7110. still puzzles me, taking into consideration that you made a special remark to Star Ocean and Tales of Phantasia being the largest games at 6 MB, with Tengai Makyō Zero being the third largest - and only one - at 5 MB (40 Mb). Interesting to note that the game is still not playable on SNES flashcarts. Special mention to "Dragon Ball Z: Hyper Dimension" that didn't even show up in the video, and it is another largely popular SA-1 game.

2:34 For those unaware, DMA is what SEGA referred too as "Blast Processing" xD

Actually, Ray-Casting is closer to Ray-Tracing than Wolfenstein 3D to 3D graphics. Your ray is simply layed out on a single line and not pixel by pixel, but the "ray from the observer to the object" principle remains.

Very clever way of ensuring the console can evolve over time by using these chips, unlike sega who just kept bringing out expensive addons, the svp chip by sega was only used on virtua racing before they abandoned it

Really good video with good background information!

The only successful add on chips were mapper chips, other than that consumers didn't want to pay extra for additional chips and manufacturers stayed away from them because the consumers didn't financially make it worth their investment.

This is NOT a complete list! ST011 is used for AI functionality in the shogi board game Hayazashi Nidan Morita Shogi. It also uses a NEC μPD96050, clocked at 15 Mhz. ST018 is used for AI functionality in Hayazashi Nidan Morita Shogi 2. It is a 21.47 MHz, 32-bit ARMv3 processor

Tengai Makyō Zero, another Japanese exclusive RPG, also used the real time clock chip. Apparently the idea was, like animal crossing, certain events would only trigger at certain times and days.

It’s interesting to me that Nintendo of America allowed 3rd parties to develop and use their own enhancement chips for the SNES era after refusing to allow NES era third-party chips in the North American market (example: Castlevania 3)

Nintendo came up with 3.58 MHz slow ass system when a Genesis with a 7.6 MHz existed for two years ... And shoved a 10 MHz SA-1 chip onto games.... the retardation level is uncanny

The “sna-nesss” isn’t a thing at it never was! No one ever called it that back then, it was simply “Super Nintendo”!

? Ok I was super impressed with Star Fox and a few other's. I have to say the fact that all those game's had to use extra chips , to me makes the genesis that much more impressive. To my knowledge only a few genesis games used other chips? I'm pretty sure that most ran off of what was on the genesis. I do think Nintendo is my favorite game company and developer. However the one time I feel they was beat was by the genesis. Before people start going on about Playstation and other's let me explain. Sega like Nintendo was one of the few companies that was great at making unique game's. These were not just cheap rip offs. Sega innovated many genres of games. Don't get me wrong NES was spectacular. SNES was also great. Other than developer probe and maybe a couple other's. ( Probe developed Mortal Kombat 1 and 2 for genesis , mortal kombat CD , mortal Kombat 2 for 32X and Mortal Kombat 2 for Saturn ). Anyways Probe sucked and while Mortal Kombat 1 had blood , the size of the rom always blew my mind and the fact that it didn't have voices? I am pretty sure it used a 12 Meg rom? I could be wrong but I am almost certain that was the size. They should have easily been able to add the voices on that one and pretty sure Mortal Kombat 2 was 16 Megabytes. Anyways the point is people who knew what they were doing on the genesis produced some really awesome games. It just honestly makes the snes look a lot weaker now that I know many of those games needed help? As to where genesis had some awesome titles. Gunstar heroes, Dynamite heady , Ristar , Sonic 1-3 , sonic and knuckles , Road Rash , NHL 94 , and others. I just feel like several of those games had stuff the SNES couldn't touch if it tried. Also many ports were just flat out better. NBA jam TE , Earthworm Jim , Samurai showdown , king of the monsters 2 and more.

The SA-1 didn't just boost the speed of the snes. It was a full 65816 CPU, a twin of the CPU in the snes but running 3X faster. Essentially replacing the snes CPU.

Dragon Ball Z Hyper Dimension also used the SA1 chip

How did the Sega CD work?

I remember when speech in video games was such a treat. That, and FMV. We take it for granted now but seeing and hearing that on a cartridge was always a nice surprise. Do you have a video about old these features?

The GSU2-SP1 is simply a chip revision. It’s literally a Small(er) Packaging. Just like all tech, it got smaller, more efficient, & cheaper.

*to be clear, it’s an additional 16-pins. 4 per corner, on both sides of the PCB.

That's actually a very clever and cost effective strategy: less focus at the CPU power itself, more focus at expansion chips inside the cartridges. But there are also many quite impressive SNES games running without expansion chips at all.

The good old Megadrive was my first home system, but the SNES is still my all time favourite with the best library of games and the one I had the most fun with. Back then, I was amazed by its mode 7 and multi layer parallax scrolling abilities.

I hope the next Switch is able to use enhancement chips. But different era, it won't happen due to digital distribution.

7:25 Remarkably so, the reason for the load time was not due to the chip. The freezes were actually caused by slow audio uploading to the SPC700 sound chip, not the S-DD1 decompression. A patch was created by a modder named gizaha that fixed these slowdowns and loading. Even though the game pretty much never crossed my mind since the 90s, it's one of those things, that makes you go, wow, interesting. All this time I thought it was because of the compression.

ia there a game that used more that one chip? is there something likfe that for ths megadrive/genesis?