I love this series, I'm really enjoying learning what was going on in the world of Sega parallel to the Nintendo games I'm so familiar with already My favourite thing about your videos, Jeremy, is all the commentary you weave through everything on how the games fit into gaming history as a whole.
From what I'm reading in the manual and doing on my own cart, Lode Runner on the SG-1000 does indeed have a level editor! You need either a SC-3000 or the keyboard addon to access it. You can make stages and load/save them from cassette as well. It takes a few commands to access it, but it is laid out in the manual how to access and use it.
Yeah, Sega definitely stepped it up in 1984, and the more faithful, fast paced SG-1000 Lode Runner serves as a good contrast to what Lode Runner would eventually become.
SG1000 graphics are their own thing. The background layer lets you pick any two colors for an 8x1 pixel region. Not 8x8, each row can freely pick different colors. This leads to multi-color game objects being aligned to the 8px grid, and having lots of 'stripes', just like the car or soccer players seen here. The actual hardware sprites are 16x16 pixels large, and are limited to 1 color + transparent. So objects will either be 1 color, moving pixel-by-pixel to the left or right, or they'll be multi-color and stripey, moving 8px at a time. You can also overlay the 1-color sprites on top of the background layer.
I like how the player character is a little smaller, and how they’ve illustrated him with those determined faces. Really sells a plucky underdog feel a la Rocky; kind of presages Little Mac.
Lots of Game publishers did in fact release their association football video games in Europe with "Soccer" in the title back in those days. Most egregiously GameTek’s Game Boy release "Elite Soccer" (DMG-YK-USA), which Rage Software released in Europe under the title "Soccer"… Yes, JUST "Soccer" (DMG-YK-NOE/UKV/EUR). Once Game Boy Works enters 1994 in 2030, we'll see it there.
In fact, I can't remember ANY soccer games other than British-made computer ones being called "Football" in Europe. It's worth noting that these games were being released in Europe as a whole, though, not just in Britain. Most Europeans are more familiar with American English than British English, so the "soccer" names make sense.
@@Pikachu132 "Most Europeans are more familiar with American English than British English" tell that to my school, who docked us points off of our English tests because we spelled "colour" without a u.
@@DaneeBound Oh, SCHOOL teaches British English all right. But all the weird britishisms you're taught in school don't exactly stick when 99.9% of English you read for the rest of your life is written in American English. So in essence we had some guy tell us it's called "football" a couple times when we were 10, and then every single other person in the world told us it's called "soccer" and that "football" is this other sport we had never heard of back when we were 10. That "ackshully soccer isn't a word, it's called football" knowledge left our collective minds pretty quick.
@@Pikachu132 "…when 99.9% of English you read for the rest of your life is written in American English." Tell THAT to Nintendo of Europe. They default to British English for their English localisation, and actually go out of their way to rewrite the already translated English scripts of certain games to conform to BE grammar and spelling rules. (see the opening of Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam Bros. for an example)
If you interpret the Lancia as Wheeljack, Safari Race could easily be the best 8-bit Transformers game. Heck, with the animals attacking you, it could also be the best Beast Wars game
Boxing has always been a notoriously difficult sport to translate into the video game format. While it plays very differently, being much more offensive-oriented with a variety of different punches, Champion Boxing holds up pretty well against Rocky Super Action Boxing. It's pretty fun once you get the hang of it.
btw, the two boxers in Champion Boxing are named in the manual. You play as Peach Boy and your opponent is named Red Devil. Seems they were going for a Momotaro theme.
That effect of having that little box around sprites in Champion Soccer that causes markings or other players to disappear looks similar to the way they got the Master System to run Space Harrier, by stacking sprites on top of each other, where the background for each sprite would partially cut off the sprite beneath it. I don't know for certain if that was the method used, but it looks like that. It let the Master System display a, er, 'somewhat' 3D effect that it shouldn't have been able to pull off just re-using the same sprite over and over.
My guess is that since I think SG-1000 had the same VDP as MSX1, the players might be composed of multiple 8-by-8 pixel characters. The VDPs colouring limitation is that each pixel row in a character would have only two colours (grass + whatever else). (I'm a hobbyist MSX dev, and that is how I'd try doing it on that system.) But, this is just a guess. Pretty sure it can't be done by sprites.
@@kissamakis yeah, I don't really know for certain. Just that it looks like there is a green block around the players (I don't know the exact method) that is on top of the lines. Space Harrier for Master System has a number of characters that have a similar effect, since it doesn't have actual sprite scaling. I could be way off base, but that's what the look reminded me of.
You're right about it being the same method as in Space Harrier SMS, but wrong about it being layered sprites. Rather they are made up of background tiles, which is why they move a bit choppy in both games, and the background is "erased".
On Champion Soccer, the TMS9918 graphics chip in the SG-1000 (Coleco, TI-99/4a, etc.) can only draw 4 sprites per scanline. With that many moving objects (that overlap), if they had used only sprites, everything would flicker really bad. So they used background graphics for the most part (except soccer ball and a few other things). Each graphics cell can only have 2 colors (IIRC) per 8x8 pixel boundary so that's why when the players overlap (or go over the white paint), everything turns off and looks weird. Still impressive for a chip that was designed in the late 70's.
@@JeremyParish The same principle applies for Safari Race. As you noted Jeremy, the player's car is very colorful and wide, too colorful and wide in fact to be composed of sprites (because of the 4 sprites of 2 colors per scanline limit) and you will notice that it only moves left and right by multiple of 8 pixels, a sure indicator that background graphics are used. Animals and other cars are all monochromatic and superposed over the background without causing any color clash, which indicates that they are made of sprites at least when they are small and overlap the road, road stripes and scenery at the same time. As soon as they grow over 4*8 = 32 pixels wide (4 sprites), sprites are not enough to represent them so they are most likely composed of background graphics themselves. In Champion Boxing, you will notice that the characters also move in 8 pixels increments so the verdict here is also clear: background graphics are used. I would not exclude that a few sprites are also used for the areas of the drawings were more precision is needed even if that may have been overkill for the era (but who knows? Every era of video game programming has its share of technical prowesses). In any case, the graphic artists are quite talented because the limitation of 2 colors per 8 horizontal pixels cell barely shows.
This episode brought back very warm memories of my parents and me playing Lode Runner for our Atari 800 when I was a kid (and them watching me make levels). Does the Sega version omit the victory music when you get all of the treasures in a level? I didn't notice it here.
Coleco’s Canada division put out games in ‘84, and some of them were quietly ground breaking. 2010:The Graphic Adventure was a puzzle action game with resource management elements, BC’s Quest for Tires 2 had a sprawling map, and Fortune Builder anticipated Sim City while implementing split-screen, heard-to-head competitive gameplay. QBerts Qubes (this one from Parker Bros) for Colecovision had realistic cube rolling animations and drastically increased puzzle action strategy over the original Qber
It's almost a shame that the colorblind acid trip tennis era ended so quickly. If it had lasted a few years to get a little more refined, it might have turned into sort of an interesting intentional neon fever dream for modern artists to be nostalgic about. On the other hand, it's impressive how fast the industry was moving in that moment. The art in Safari Race honestly holds up so much better than anything from even a few months earlier. With modern gaming being comparatively so established, I can barely tell the difference between games released years apart now. Heck, it takes so long to make one modern game that the dev cycle of one new game would have been three or four major revolutions in the early 80's.
Lode runner, one of the games included on a multicart I got when I was a kid that utterly confused me. Mostly because I couldn't read the Road Runner title card fast enough and thought it was a Road Runner game at first.
The Apple/SG1000 Lode Runner game is one of my all time favorites. I find the scrolling screen Famicom version near unplayable. Based on sales (and most follow ups) I’m in the minority.
I appreciate the touch of realism Sega added in Safari Race with how the animals jump straight into your car
This channel has worked 43 days without a Heiankyo alien reference.
I love this series, I'm really enjoying learning what was going on in the world of Sega parallel to the Nintendo games I'm so familiar with already
My favourite thing about your videos, Jeremy, is all the commentary you weave through everything on how the games fit into gaming history as a whole.
From what I'm reading in the manual and doing on my own cart, Lode Runner on the SG-1000 does indeed have a level editor! You need either a SC-3000 or the keyboard addon to access it. You can make stages and load/save them from cassette as well. It takes a few commands to access it, but it is laid out in the manual how to access and use it.
Yeah, Sega definitely stepped it up in 1984, and the more faithful, fast paced SG-1000 Lode Runner serves as a good contrast to what Lode Runner would eventually become.
Lode Runner, everyone take a shot
But he did avoid mentioning Heiankyo Alien, so no bingo.
"Erm druuuunkkk!!"
SG1000 graphics are their own thing. The background layer lets you pick any two colors for an 8x1 pixel region. Not 8x8, each row can freely pick different colors. This leads to multi-color game objects being aligned to the 8px grid, and having lots of 'stripes', just like the car or soccer players seen here. The actual hardware sprites are 16x16 pixels large, and are limited to 1 color + transparent. So objects will either be 1 color, moving pixel-by-pixel to the left or right, or they'll be multi-color and stripey, moving 8px at a time. You can also overlay the 1-color sprites on top of the background layer.
So I was right that the big “sprites” are background objects.
Very similar to the MSX, then.
5:01 Wow, championship boxing looks great!
I like how the player character is a little smaller, and how they’ve illustrated him with those determined faces. Really sells a plucky underdog feel a la Rocky; kind of presages Little Mac.
I appreciate the very subtle D4 reference.
I consistently miss them all, I am a man of zero culture apparently. 😉
Lots of Game publishers did in fact release their association football video games in Europe with "Soccer" in the title back in those days.
Most egregiously GameTek’s Game Boy release "Elite Soccer" (DMG-YK-USA), which Rage Software released in Europe under the title "Soccer"… Yes, JUST "Soccer" (DMG-YK-NOE/UKV/EUR).
Once Game Boy Works enters 1994 in 2030, we'll see it there.
Or Super Soccer on SNES.
In fact, I can't remember ANY soccer games other than British-made computer ones being called "Football" in Europe.
It's worth noting that these games were being released in Europe as a whole, though, not just in Britain. Most Europeans are more familiar with American English than British English, so the "soccer" names make sense.
@@Pikachu132 "Most Europeans are more familiar with American English than British English" tell that to my school, who docked us points off of our English tests because we spelled "colour" without a u.
@@DaneeBound Oh, SCHOOL teaches British English all right. But all the weird britishisms you're taught in school don't exactly stick when 99.9% of English you read for the rest of your life is written in American English.
So in essence we had some guy tell us it's called "football" a couple times when we were 10, and then every single other person in the world told us it's called "soccer" and that "football" is this other sport we had never heard of back when we were 10. That "ackshully soccer isn't a word, it's called football" knowledge left our collective minds pretty quick.
@@Pikachu132 "…when 99.9% of English you read for the rest of your life is written in American English."
Tell THAT to Nintendo of Europe. They default to British English for their English localisation, and actually go out of their way to rewrite the already translated English scripts of certain games to conform to BE grammar and spelling rules. (see the opening of Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam Bros. for an example)
If you interpret the Lancia as Wheeljack, Safari Race could easily be the best 8-bit Transformers game. Heck, with the animals attacking you, it could also be the best Beast Wars game
Pony Canyon published the Champion series of games for MSX. Konamis Boxing an MSx boxing game that was basically improved version of Champion Boxing
Boxing has always been a notoriously difficult sport to translate into the video game format. While it plays very differently, being much more offensive-oriented with a variety of different punches, Champion Boxing holds up pretty well against Rocky Super Action Boxing. It's pretty fun once you get the hang of it.
Mma is far far harder
btw, the two boxers in Champion Boxing are named in the manual. You play as Peach Boy and your opponent is named Red Devil. Seems they were going for a Momotaro theme.
That effect of having that little box around sprites in Champion Soccer that causes markings or other players to disappear looks similar to the way they got the Master System to run Space Harrier, by stacking sprites on top of each other, where the background for each sprite would partially cut off the sprite beneath it. I don't know for certain if that was the method used, but it looks like that. It let the Master System display a, er, 'somewhat' 3D effect that it shouldn't have been able to pull off just re-using the same sprite over and over.
My guess is that since I think SG-1000 had the same VDP as MSX1, the players might be composed of multiple 8-by-8 pixel characters. The VDPs colouring limitation is that each pixel row in a character would have only two colours (grass + whatever else). (I'm a hobbyist MSX dev, and that is how I'd try doing it on that system.) But, this is just a guess. Pretty sure it can't be done by sprites.
@@kissamakis yeah, I don't really know for certain. Just that it looks like there is a green block around the players (I don't know the exact method) that is on top of the lines. Space Harrier for Master System has a number of characters that have a similar effect, since it doesn't have actual sprite scaling. I could be way off base, but that's what the look reminded me of.
You're right about it being the same method as in Space Harrier SMS, but wrong about it being layered sprites. Rather they are made up of background tiles, which is why they move a bit choppy in both games, and the background is "erased".
@@todesziege ah ok. Like I said, I don't (or didn't) know the exact method. Thanks.
On Champion Soccer, the TMS9918 graphics chip in the SG-1000 (Coleco, TI-99/4a, etc.) can only draw 4 sprites per scanline. With that many moving objects (that overlap), if they had used only sprites, everything would flicker really bad. So they used background graphics for the most part (except soccer ball and a few other things). Each graphics cell can only have 2 colors (IIRC) per 8x8 pixel boundary so that's why when the players overlap (or go over the white paint), everything turns off and looks weird. Still impressive for a chip that was designed in the late 70's.
Thanks for the specifics! I’ll cite you in the book edition of this entry.
@@JeremyParish Awesome. Be sure to let me know when it's available. Thanks.
@@JeremyParish The same principle applies for Safari Race.
As you noted Jeremy, the player's car is very colorful and wide, too colorful and wide in fact to be composed of sprites (because of the 4 sprites of 2 colors per scanline limit) and you will notice that it only moves left and right by multiple of 8 pixels, a sure indicator that background graphics are used.
Animals and other cars are all monochromatic and superposed over the background without causing any color clash, which indicates that they are made of sprites at least when they are small and overlap the road, road stripes and scenery at the same time.
As soon as they grow over 4*8 = 32 pixels wide (4 sprites), sprites are not enough to represent them so they are most likely composed of background graphics themselves.
In Champion Boxing, you will notice that the characters also move in 8 pixels increments so the verdict here is also clear: background graphics are used. I would not exclude that a few sprites are also used for the areas of the drawings were more precision is needed even if that may have been overkill for the era (but who knows? Every era of video game programming has its share of technical prowesses).
In any case, the graphic artists are quite talented because the limitation of 2 colors per 8 horizontal pixels cell barely shows.
This episode brought back very warm memories of my parents and me playing Lode Runner for our Atari 800 when I was a kid (and them watching me make levels). Does the Sega version omit the victory music when you get all of the treasures in a level? I didn't notice it here.
Coleco’s Canada division put out games in ‘84, and some of them were quietly ground breaking. 2010:The Graphic Adventure was a puzzle action game with resource management elements, BC’s Quest for Tires 2 had a sprawling map, and Fortune Builder anticipated Sim City while implementing split-screen, heard-to-head competitive gameplay.
QBerts Qubes (this one from Parker Bros) for Colecovision had realistic cube rolling animations and drastically increased puzzle action strategy over the original Qber
It's almost a shame that the colorblind acid trip tennis era ended so quickly. If it had lasted a few years to get a little more refined, it might have turned into sort of an interesting intentional neon fever dream for modern artists to be nostalgic about. On the other hand, it's impressive how fast the industry was moving in that moment. The art in Safari Race honestly holds up so much better than anything from even a few months earlier. With modern gaming being comparatively so established, I can barely tell the difference between games released years apart now. Heck, it takes so long to make one modern game that the dev cycle of one new game would have been three or four major revolutions in the early 80's.
Champion Tennis was an MSX port, so it's graphics style doesn't really have anything to do with Sega or the SG-1000.
Lode runner, one of the games included on a multicart I got when I was a kid that utterly confused me. Mostly because I couldn't read the Road Runner title card fast enough and thought it was a Road Runner game at first.
I can't unsee the Compile panache now.
The Sukeban Deka Mark III tease ugh
My cart of Sukeban Deka III is currently being used to test an RGB amp mod for my Mark III in preparation for the future of this series
I honestly avoided Safari Race since I assumed it was a Safari Hunt sequel. Looks like I have a new Safari to hunt.
Now you can avoid it because it has that awful refueling mechanic
Why would someone build a racetrack through a safari park anyway?
Ah well, video game logic, best not question it.
Rich people bored of doing things the normal, legal way. Like in The Most Dangerous Game.
Lode runner is a classic game. 😀👍🎮
This boxing game is super cute
mad I wasn't the first to compliment the nice D4 reference
The Apple/SG1000 Lode Runner game is one of my all time favorites. I find the scrolling screen Famicom version near unplayable. Based on sales (and most follow ups) I’m in the minority.
What's that on channel 14 before the Retronauts logo? I usually get these, but this one has me scratching my head. Thanks for the great content!
The music video for "Puttin on the Ritz" by Taco, I think.
Yep! One of the true One-Hit Wonders
damn, sucks that lode runner had to lose its best feature, but neat that compile did the porting work!
Lode Runner is quickly becoming the new Heiankyo Alien.
More Pachinko damnit.