I clicked this video, because the thumbnail had an image of one of my favorite SNES games, Super Off Road: The Baja. When I first saw images of it in game magazines, I knew there was something special about it. I bought it as soon as I could. The gameplay seems simple now, but back then it just felt amazing driving up and down those dirt paths. I hope the original developers come across your video. Their hard clever work is still appreciated even after all these years.
Terranigma is incredible. Anyone who hasn't play it, stop what you're doing and play it now. Graphically some of the best stuff I've seen on the SNES, unbelievable soundtrack and graphics, amazing combat, story. I don't know why I'm bothering to make this comment, I just love the game so much lol. I found it quite literally life changing in a way no other game has. Glad you included it
My family had Terranigma for our SNES when we bought the game brand new back in 1997. To this day it remains of my favourite games. The soundtrack is one of my all time favs too.
I thought you were going to say... "I don't know why I'm bothering to make this comment.. When I should BE PLAYING IT!"... hahah. Thanks for the recommendation. It's time I played through it.. Forgot about it.
@@ChrisEbz Lol, I should be. But I'm replaying Chrono Trigger after a long time after FF5. Shame that game never got a proper SNES release outside Japan
Glad I got to play it back when it released. We might have missed out on games like FF6, Chrono Trigger and SMRPG in Australia, but we did get Terranigma!
Programmers working with hardware limits back in the day were God-tier. Nobody in the future is going to make a video about how a 100gb UE4 engine pushed limits.
I think people in the future are going to make videos about UE5 engine and how it pushed limits, but not in a positive way. I hope that in the future developers are going to spend more time on enemy/companion AI and animations and physics and doing more interesting things with it. No more bodies and objects clipping through each other and walls and stuff. I hope they finally going to push those limits. Those things haven't really improved much since Half Life 2 in 2004 and Crysis in 2007.
@@davidaitken8503 I'm pretty amazed when playing TOTK how much stuff can be happening at the same time, can absolutely forgive it for feeling like a slideshow when there's so many interactions between the objects and characters on screen. Wish the others would make some stuff in the same vein rather than trying to draw individual blackheads on characters noses or whatever lol.
@@pretzelboi64 If you truly think that, you are a grade A moron. Gluing objects together is just one very small component to everything that is going on simultaneously in Zelda TotK. Nice try, TROLLBOT.
Goemon 3 chase scene: sprites for the clouds and mountains, HDMA sky background, Mode7 enemy, NO split. Rotating HMDA gradient for the ground, sprites for the trees and players. Split, status bar as normal. And windowing for the laser beams.
I knew most of these, but you still managed to point out some I wasn't aware of. Great video! The SNES was such an upgrade at the time when it came out if you were around to witness it. You felt like you were living in the future. New console releases now just feel like more of the same, which makes me sad.
Speaking of Star Wars on the SNES, the final level in _Super Return of the Jedi_ featured the attack on the New Death Star, and utilized Mode 7 in an interesting way to provide an "infinite zoom" or "screen tunnel" effect. Presumably, the background tiles for this level were stored in two or three different sizes (by a 1:2:4 ratio) so that when the outermost layer exceeds the screen space it can update the tilemap and reset the camera seamlessly.
This is probably the best video I have seen on how mode 7 actually works. Also I am glad you called out the Axelay stuff that people normally say is Mode 7, but isn't.
Thanks! And yeah I have a video all about games mistaken for using mode 7 and explaining what's actually going on, and Axelay is one of those games: ruclips.net/video/vZmrZCpBJhc/видео.html
@@WhitePointerGaming Is the bit where you are driving across the desert in super Star Wars on a sand speeder using mode 7? If so it's a game that uses some sort of trick to make it seem like you are getting closer too your destination the longer you go towards it and from memory it seems like that part was using mode 7.
@@Mrnoob951It is using mode 7 but not in the background. They simply replace the sand crawler with a larger one several times during the stage. It isn't even tied to your movement. You are required to destroy a certain number of Jawas flying around in little pods. The sand crawler increasing in size is tied to several enemy defeat number milestones.
I wasn't aware of mode 7 before, and only knew a little bit about the relationship between textures/sprites before this, but it was so accessible and informative, and hearing people who sound informed like yourself giving it that level of praise makes this vid even more impressive.
I hate to break it to you but 'the background isn't actually moving'... yes. yes it is. as much as any polygon in any 3d game is rendered on your screen. you just described the process by which a 2d plane is manipulated to give the correct perspective under rotation for the user. that is EXACTLY what's going on.
I think it's more in reference to the fact that video games usually store backgrounds in an alternative buffer, but the image in the buffer isn't moving at all as it normally might in a game with scrolling and changing backgrounds.
@@R2Bl3nd It's the same either way: the background occupies a predictable region of memory (basically VRAM) while the rendering hardware is given a set of parameters of which portion of it should be drawn how (effectively, a camera position). There's a reason the memory region corresponds to 2x2 screens large, so that, for a given camera position, the game can change the offscreen portions of the tilemap and therefore present levels much larger than the actual background layer.
Speed Racer does HDMA scanline hill tricks as well, but in that game you can turn the player viewpoint in 360 degrees (to go right, left, backwards, etc.) When you turn parallel to each "hill" you see the scanline effect essentially "flattening out."
Speed Racer also has an awful frame rate, it looks terrible and is borderline unplayable imo. They should have called it "Slow Racer" :) Road to the Top does a better job of this.
@@WhitePointerGaming I'm not arguing that, it's just really apparent in speed racer when you turn perpendicular to the hill if you want the best look at the "hill" flattening out. Al Unser does do this but I always thought it was really visible in SR.
Super Empire Strikes Back did something similar; you could fly around in any direction on the map but this barely impacted the illusion of hills and elevation changes rendered onscreen. (In the Hoth battle specifically, hitting an abrupt hill at too high a speed caused you to collide and take some damage.)
I know that the way computers work today is an engine developer's dream - programmable everything (except blending for some reason). There are some specialized new units like RT and AI cores, but it's enough work just to use them in the intended way. I miss the times when devs reached the limits of some weird specialized hardware and then pushed beyond it.
I’d say the machine vision based inside out tracking using DSPs would be a modern example of that. Crazy the Quest can track movement as accurately as it does using cameras for hours on a tiny battery, while running the game the whole time on that same battery.
Modern tricks to solve problems are just only really interesting to those people who understand it. And currently creating games is entirely different. So you get tricks like "I added ray tracing and saved performance!" probably a cool programming fix, but to use not as interesting.
Windowing (aka masking) was a powerful effect with or without Mode 7 -- the console could functionally render ANY geometric shape if it could be defined one scanline at a time, like (I presume) the rotating Triforce pieces in _The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past._ Or for simpler examples, the circular screen wipe at the end of levels in Super Mario World, or especially the keyhole-shaped screen wipe when you successfully find the key exit.
Windowing was used more often than you may have realised. For example, many explosion effects, such as the power bombs in Super Metroid or the helio bomb in Contra 3 were created using windows with HDMA colour effects inside them. I talk about this more in my video about transparency on the SNES: ruclips.net/video/K1DSUHFDmkA/видео.html
Greetings from Brazil! I've seen many videos about SNES curiosities and I think your videos are the most detailed and well explained. You talked about some interesting details about Mode 7 that I didn't know yet, as well as introducing some games that I hadn't seen yet. Good luck to you, I loved your videos!
Awesome video! Isn't Super Soccer doing the same thing as the Melfand Stories cart scene? It seems to be splitting the screen and applying a perspective effect to the pitch, while the goal and the audience in the upper part of the screen seem to be zoomed as you get closer to the goal.
This is constantly engaging and the way you present it gives the viewer the satisfaction of working out a few things out themselves, I love it, thanks dude!
Fascinating yet very accessible video for the layman, thanks. Cameltry is correctly pronounced as Camel + Try, as confirmed via the Japanese (phonetic) title.
Super EDF stage 5 has one of my favorites. You slowly approach a planet over the course of the stage that zooms & rotates over time and they made it look really nice.
19:11 I could be mistaken, but I think the SNES version of Taz-Mania may have been doing a similar dynamic scaling of different segments of the mode 7 section of the screen, which it can even completely scroll off the screen sometimes when Taz jumps into the air while going up a hill.
Awesome video, cool effects showcase and you explain them in an easy to follow breakdown. The layer priority and sprite use was very creatively implemented.
My first snes game was star wars empire strikes back. The mode 7 stage of the battle of hoth, with the at ats and tye snowspeeders was absolutely mindblowing back then
This is some beyond top notch analysis and this could really inspire some wicked cool stuff for game development! Thank you very much for this I may even use these examples for my own game
I'm pretty sure there was at least one soccer game that did what Melfand Stories' first example was doing. I'd also say the arcade version of GI Joe was doing something similar, but that's a different game and hardware altogether. R-Type III went a bit nuts with its use of Mode 7, starting with that opening sequence. That's just the first thing that came to mind.
It's very interesting to think about games like F-Zero and Pilotwings as part of the launch package of games for the SNES, showing off how smooth the Mode 7 really operates and how it can open up a lot creative uses. Those games aren't just designed to be a good game for players, but a good advertisement to developers.
Melfand Stories reminds me of Dimension X for the Atari 8-bit. There were a lot of 8-bit games, especially racing and tank games, that split the screen into a horizon at the top, and some pseudo-3d perspective taking up most of the screen. They didn't have Mode 7 but there were other cheap raster effects that could be used to create a straight road, or a flat striped ground to suggest forward motion, or even a checkerboard like Ballblazer and Dimension X did. But in most games, the horizon was just a decoration and stayed the same no matter how far you traveled. In Dimension X, the horizon would show more scanlines of the horizon graphics as you approached the edge of your sector. You could even enter tunnels at the edge of the sector, to move to other sectors as other animation methods switched in.
When you asked how Hyperzone was doing two layers I immediately thought of multiple tracks on the same sheet. So I was pretty happy when a couple later games used that, even if I was totally wrong about Hyperzone. :D
Today the only thing I see that programmers will really optimize are either last-generation console back-ports or mobile games that need to support a wide variety of devices. Back in 2013 I was working on Adobe AIR based Android slot games, and it was tricky to stay within the GPU texture map limitations and still get a real scrolling (not fake scrolling) slot game that ran at 60 fps even on 4-5 year old devices.
I feel Super Off Road: The Baja worked with a low framerate because its big trucks on a raceway and the lower framerate sold the sense of weight that the cars had when moving having them be slower.
@White_Pointer Gaming regarding Melfand Stories: Final Fantasy 6 uses in its intro-sequence a similar technique to simulate the movement towards an location, in this case Narshe.
>If you want to know more about how mode 7 works on technical level, I'll leave a link to a video by Retro Game Mechanics Explained in the description. Thanks, I'll watch it for sure! >Just be warned that you'll need to brush up on your linear algebra and trigonometry skills to fully understand it. I've already told you that I'm going to watch it, Harry. You don't need to sell it to me! 😂
That's the original Secret of Mana, it always had the compass markings ;) You're right that Seiken Densetsu 3, aka Trials of Mana, did not have the compass, but that had minimaps instead.
Going from that tennis game that ran incredibly smooth considering all the movement going on to that racer that barely chugs along was quite the contrast, it really proves the point that it was all about how mode 7 was used and how much juice could be squeezed from the SNES before it started struggling to keep up.
Would love to hear more about the elevation changes in The Empire Strikes Back and Super Off Road on the SNES. Always wondered back then if they ever would have released a Super Mario Kart 2 they used elevation in it. On the other hand we got Stunt Race FX which perhaps set the standard for Mario Kart 64.
Speaking of Super Empire Strikes Back, I always wondered how they achieved the effect in the Cloud City flying stage where you can pass the X-Wing above and below the cloud layer.
12:50 Does the Final Fantasy 6 intro, when the mechs walking towards Narshe, not doing the same? I don't know how its realized, but the end effect for the viewer is the same.
Super Offroad: The Baja was mind blowing back then. It was sooo fun too. I liked spending all my money on just nitro and boosting through the race super fast running over everything (those poor quad riders). My truck would be so effed up by the end of it if I even survived at all hahaha.
I’ve long wondered how they did Hoth in STESB! Nice one. Off Road feels like it’d have done better with a classic scrolling road. That snowboarding one looks good!
If I'm not mistaken, the BG in Mode 7 can't be animated, but you can do some tricks with the color palette to make it look like an animation. Many years ago I specialized in color palette animation to create really cool boot screens for Windows 9x. I had to learn how that FMV from Sonic 3D Blast on the Sega Genesis worked, but I was able to understand it thoroughly and create some cool stuff, placing all the frames inside the image, and using different colors to separate them. Then I set up the color palette and it would place the colors in the correct positions for each frame of the animation, giving the sensation of fluid animation. Unfortunately those boot screens no longer exist because I uploaded them to a website that died many years ago, but I have a video on my channel of a customized version of Windows 98 with a boot screen with a cool reflection effect while Windows starts up. Another incredibly laborious but brilliant technique is the way Elite works, with sprites with drawings, which can be arranged in various ways to look like vectors.
You can do animations just fine (see the bosses in Dennis the Menace) but palette effects definitely make some kinds of animations cheaper/easier to do.
I would love to see an entire video devoted to Space Megaforce on SNES. In particular I want to understand what is going on with the first level boss. It is large, with a spherical portion in the center that disconnects and rotates. There appears to be tiles behind it though, as the ground below is quite detailed. Is the entire ground constructed of sprites, or did they somehow keep the last tile screen in memory before switching to mode 7? Just what is going on here? The scrolling stops and the screen flashes several times before the boss enters the screen. Is this to distract from what they are doing? I think the score, lives, bombs, etc. are built with sprites which leads me to the general question about this game. How is Compile pushing so many sprites around the screen so effortlessly while maintaining such fast performance? What did they know that other developers never figured out?
I want to throw Wing Commander on SNES into the list! The dogfighting in the game has you engaging with ships, carriers and the like with Mode 7, and it is painstakingly used to emulate a full 3D environment. The closest contemporary the game has in terms of combat is WarpSpeed, which is considerably less detailed.
You should take a look at "Jim Powers: The Lost Dimension In 3D", it used Mode 7 in creative ways. Each area was a different game type (top down, side shooter, side scroller, boss, etc.).
A game im actuelly very much so much hate, due the dizzy wrong way scrolling. Im perfer the original Amiga version all the way. OST is cool, well done and Steam version actuelly fixed the worst of it too.
I'd like to know how R-Type 3 did the bullets for the first boss. The first boss is in the distance firing the scaling and rotating bullets into the foreground. It's not 1 bullets at a time. There might be 4 bullets flying towards you at once.
I'd like to know how Super Return of Jedi pulled off the last 2 levels going into and escaping from the exploding 2nd Death Star. There appear to be 3 to 4 scaling and rotating layers, which should not be possible for mode 7. While the top and bottom walls could be explained by switching what's drawn on a scanline basis that doesn't explain the side walls which should be impossible to "layer" that way. The furthest "layer" looks like it might be drawn first to prevent having to draw over pixels multiple times, but that still wouldn't explain the "multilayers" on the side walls.There's a lot of black and the top and bottom of the screen, probably to save framerate, but this shouldn't be possible at all. The common methods don't seem to cover this example. I'm very curious what they did there.
I played Terranigma under the emulator. Of course I have seen many mode 7 effects but not this one yet and I was convinced that the emulator was displaying it incorrectly ! it was so weird.
I clicked this video, because the thumbnail had an image of one of my favorite SNES games, Super Off Road: The Baja. When I first saw images of it in game magazines, I knew there was something special about it. I bought it as soon as I could. The gameplay seems simple now, but back then it just felt amazing driving up and down those dirt paths. I hope the original developers come across your video. Their hard clever work is still appreciated even after all these years.
Terranigma is incredible. Anyone who hasn't play it, stop what you're doing and play it now. Graphically some of the best stuff I've seen on the SNES, unbelievable soundtrack and graphics, amazing combat, story. I don't know why I'm bothering to make this comment, I just love the game so much lol. I found it quite literally life changing in a way no other game has. Glad you included it
My family had Terranigma for our SNES when we bought the game brand new back in 1997. To this day it remains of my favourite games. The soundtrack is one of my all time favs too.
I thought you were going to say... "I don't know why I'm bothering to make this comment.. When I should BE PLAYING IT!"... hahah. Thanks for the recommendation. It's time I played through it.. Forgot about it.
@@ChrisEbz Lol, I should be. But I'm replaying Chrono Trigger after a long time after FF5. Shame that game never got a proper SNES release outside Japan
Glad I got to play it back when it released. We might have missed out on games like FF6, Chrono Trigger and SMRPG in Australia, but we did get Terranigma!
Just playing it for the first time this year. FANTASTIC!!! 🤯
Programmers working with hardware limits back in the day were God-tier. Nobody in the future is going to make a video about how a 100gb UE4 engine pushed limits.
I think people in the future are going to make videos about UE5 engine and how it pushed limits, but not in a positive way. I hope that in the future developers are going to spend more time on enemy/companion AI and animations and physics and doing more interesting things with it. No more bodies and objects clipping through each other and walls and stuff. I hope they finally going to push those limits. Those things haven't really improved much since Half Life 2 in 2004 and Crysis in 2007.
@@KneppaHZelda TotK as well as its' predecessor are doing a lot of really interesting stuff with physics.
@@davidaitken8503 I'm pretty amazed when playing TOTK how much stuff can be happening at the same time, can absolutely forgive it for feeling like a slideshow when there's so many interactions between the objects and characters on screen. Wish the others would make some stuff in the same vein rather than trying to draw individual blackheads on characters noses or whatever lol.
@@davidaitken8503 Nothing that hasn't been done before tho. Zelda TotK is basically just Banjo Nuts & Bolts but for the Zelda franchise
@@pretzelboi64 If you truly think that, you are a grade A moron. Gluing objects together is just one very small component to everything that is going on simultaneously in Zelda TotK. Nice try, TROLLBOT.
It's crazy how old games still feel like they were made using magic. Classic devs were really something else.
Goemon 3 chase scene: sprites for the clouds and mountains, HDMA sky background, Mode7 enemy, NO split. Rotating HMDA gradient for the ground, sprites for the trees and players. Split, status bar as normal. And windowing for the laser beams.
You nailed it! Nice work. It's really neat how they made a background without actually using a background layer.
I think a boss fight in Jim Power did something simular with an HDMA gradient for the ground
Nerrrrrrrrd
👏🏾
Yes. It's easy once you think of how mode 7 and hdma works
I knew most of these, but you still managed to point out some I wasn't aware of. Great video! The SNES was such an upgrade at the time when it came out if you were around to witness it. You felt like you were living in the future. New console releases now just feel like more of the same, which makes me sad.
I really like the visualizations of the mode 7 scaning a layer
Speaking of Star Wars on the SNES, the final level in _Super Return of the Jedi_ featured the attack on the New Death Star, and utilized Mode 7 in an interesting way to provide an "infinite zoom" or "screen tunnel" effect. Presumably, the background tiles for this level were stored in two or three different sizes (by a 1:2:4 ratio) so that when the outermost layer exceeds the screen space it can update the tilemap and reset the camera seamlessly.
This is probably the best video I have seen on how mode 7 actually works. Also I am glad you called out the Axelay stuff that people normally say is Mode 7, but isn't.
Thanks! And yeah I have a video all about games mistaken for using mode 7 and explaining what's actually going on, and Axelay is one of those games: ruclips.net/video/vZmrZCpBJhc/видео.html
@@WhitePointerGaminggreat video
@@WhitePointerGaming Is the bit where you are driving across the desert in super Star Wars on a sand speeder using mode 7? If so it's a game that uses some sort of trick to make it seem like you are getting closer too your destination the longer you go towards it and from memory it seems like that part was using mode 7.
@@Mrnoob951It is using mode 7 but not in the background. They simply replace the sand crawler with a larger one several times during the stage. It isn't even tied to your movement. You are required to destroy a certain number of Jawas flying around in little pods. The sand crawler increasing in size is tied to several enemy defeat number milestones.
I wasn't aware of mode 7 before, and only knew a little bit about the relationship between textures/sprites before this, but it was so accessible and informative, and hearing people who sound informed like yourself giving it that level of praise makes this vid even more impressive.
Excellent video with very well-presented information!
Thank you, that means a lot! I really enjoy your channel and I'm happy you found mine :)
@@WhitePointerGaming Game Sack is the raddest. High praise indeed when Joe sends you some kudos!
I hate to break it to you but 'the background isn't actually moving'... yes. yes it is. as much as any polygon in any 3d game is rendered on your screen. you just described the process by which a 2d plane is manipulated to give the correct perspective under rotation for the user. that is EXACTLY what's going on.
I think it's more in reference to the fact that video games usually store backgrounds in an alternative buffer, but the image in the buffer isn't moving at all as it normally might in a game with scrolling and changing backgrounds.
@@R2Bl3nd It's the same either way: the background occupies a predictable region of memory (basically VRAM) while the rendering hardware is given a set of parameters of which portion of it should be drawn how (effectively, a camera position). There's a reason the memory region corresponds to 2x2 screens large, so that, for a given camera position, the game can change the offscreen portions of the tilemap and therefore present levels much larger than the actual background layer.
Pedantic moron
honestly, thanks for the Mode 7 explanation
having a visualization of what is happening made it finally make sense to me
I just discovered this channel and subscribed. I genuinely love 16 and 32 bit tech since the developers actually had real limitations to work around.
Thanks for the sub and welcome aboard!
Speed Racer does HDMA scanline hill tricks as well, but in that game you can turn the player viewpoint in 360 degrees (to go right, left, backwards, etc.) When you turn parallel to each "hill" you see the scanline effect essentially "flattening out."
Speed Racer also has an awful frame rate, it looks terrible and is borderline unplayable imo. They should have called it "Slow Racer" :) Road to the Top does a better job of this.
@@WhitePointerGaming I'm not arguing that, it's just really apparent in speed racer when you turn perpendicular to the hill if you want the best look at the "hill" flattening out. Al Unser does do this but I always thought it was really visible in SR.
Super Empire Strikes Back did something similar; you could fly around in any direction on the map but this barely impacted the illusion of hills and elevation changes rendered onscreen. (In the Hoth battle specifically, hitting an abrupt hill at too high a speed caused you to collide and take some damage.)
@@Stratelier Yea, less hills than SR but when you did fly towards one at a different angle it held up better for sure.
I know that the way computers work today is an engine developer's dream - programmable everything (except blending for some reason). There are some specialized new units like RT and AI cores, but it's enough work just to use them in the intended way. I miss the times when devs reached the limits of some weird specialized hardware and then pushed beyond it.
I’d say the machine vision based inside out tracking using DSPs would be a modern example of that. Crazy the Quest can track movement as accurately as it does using cameras for hours on a tiny battery, while running the game the whole time on that same battery.
Retro tech is so much more interesting than the stuff modern consoles are doing because they find clever solutions to problems.
There are also clever solutions sometimes used for modern consoles. For example, the virtual geometry algorithm is ingenious.
Just watched a demo for the commander 16 and I couldn't agree more
Modern tricks to solve problems are just only really interesting to those people who understand it. And currently creating games is entirely different. So you get tricks like "I added ray tracing and saved performance!" probably a cool programming fix, but to use not as interesting.
“Liking something means other stuff sucks” -idiot gamers
Really smart use of the window to create the net in the tennis game. I could not figure that one out
Windowing (aka masking) was a powerful effect with or without Mode 7 -- the console could functionally render ANY geometric shape if it could be defined one scanline at a time, like (I presume) the rotating Triforce pieces in _The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past._ Or for simpler examples, the circular screen wipe at the end of levels in Super Mario World, or especially the keyhole-shaped screen wipe when you successfully find the key exit.
@@Stratelier ah yes those. Totally forgot those. Oddly that games did not use this more
Windowing was used more often than you may have realised. For example, many explosion effects, such as the power bombs in Super Metroid or the helio bomb in Contra 3 were created using windows with HDMA colour effects inside them. I talk about this more in my video about transparency on the SNES: ruclips.net/video/K1DSUHFDmkA/видео.html
Greetings from Brazil! I've seen many videos about SNES curiosities and I think your videos are the most detailed and well explained. You talked about some interesting details about Mode 7 that I didn't know yet, as well as introducing some games that I hadn't seen yet. Good luck to you, I loved your videos!
Hello Brazil from Australia! Thank you for the kind words :)
Awesome video! Isn't Super Soccer doing the same thing as the Melfand Stories cart scene? It seems to be splitting the screen and applying a perspective effect to the pitch, while the goal and the audience in the upper part of the screen seem to be zoomed as you get closer to the goal.
Holy crap, theres a ton of these I had no idea about; but they are indeed freaking amazing and creative! Wow!
This is constantly engaging and the way you present it gives the viewer the satisfaction of working out a few things out themselves, I love it, thanks dude!
Thanks, glad you enjoyed it!
Fascinating yet very accessible video for the layman, thanks. Cameltry is correctly pronounced as Camel + Try, as confirmed via the Japanese (phonetic) title.
Once again, brain blown. I love the visualization technique you use.
Mode 7 was such a cool SNES ability. Loved it back then. Very interesting video.
I love this series. Every time you upload a new one I go back and watch all the retro graphic videos you uploaded. Keep up the great work
Thank you! Definitely got some more ideas lined up :)
17:00 just imagine a RoadRash on the snes with this engine
Super EDF stage 5 has one of my favorites. You slowly approach a planet over the course of the stage that zooms & rotates over time and they made it look really nice.
LOVE LOVE LOVE videos like this! Keep up the awesome work!
19:11 I could be mistaken, but I think the SNES version of Taz-Mania may have been doing a similar dynamic scaling of different segments of the mode 7 section of the screen, which it can even completely scroll off the screen sometimes when Taz jumps into the air while going up a hill.
Top tier video. Digital Foundry worthy!
Awesome video, cool effects showcase and you explain them in an easy to follow breakdown. The layer priority and sprite use was very creatively implemented.
Thanks for your research and hard work on this topic. This is absolutely amazing. Well done.
Thanks, glad you enjoyed it!
Great video by the way, your editing is incredible.
Holy crap, that Mode 7 implementation in Ace no Narae! is INSANE!
My first snes game was star wars empire strikes back.
The mode 7 stage of the battle of hoth, with the at ats and tye snowspeeders was absolutely mindblowing back then
This is some beyond top notch analysis and this could really inspire some wicked cool stuff for game development! Thank you very much for this I may even use these examples for my own game
I'm glad I came across your channel randomly and decided to sub. Excellent content.
Thanks for the sub and welcome aboard!
I'm pretty sure there was at least one soccer game that did what Melfand Stories' first example was doing. I'd also say the arcade version of GI Joe was doing something similar, but that's a different game and hardware altogether.
R-Type III went a bit nuts with its use of Mode 7, starting with that opening sequence. That's just the first thing that came to mind.
Super Soccer by Human Inc. released in 1992.
I would've never guessed Axelay's biped worked like that, crazy stuff.
I've read and seen some videos about Mode 7 but never have I thought it was possible to have more than one Mode at a time.
One of my favorite mode 7 examples was NCAA Basketball.
I love videos like this that takes our prejudice against older graphics and makes us appreciate the genius solutions of the past, in the future!
Fascinating video, Axelay did some really clever tricks across its different levels.
Doing the right math for Super Off Road must have been a nightmare!
Very nice!
Both the explanations and the idea to do it back in the day.
Thanks!
It's very interesting to think about games like F-Zero and Pilotwings as part of the launch package of games for the SNES, showing off how smooth the Mode 7 really operates and how it can open up a lot creative uses. Those games aren't just designed to be a good game for players, but a good advertisement to developers.
This was a really interesting video, well produced too. Thanks!
Melfand Stories reminds me of Dimension X for the Atari 8-bit.
There were a lot of 8-bit games, especially racing and tank games, that split the screen into a horizon at the top, and some pseudo-3d perspective taking up most of the screen. They didn't have Mode 7 but there were other cheap raster effects that could be used to create a straight road, or a flat striped ground to suggest forward motion, or even a checkerboard like Ballblazer and Dimension X did. But in most games, the horizon was just a decoration and stayed the same no matter how far you traveled. In Dimension X, the horizon would show more scanlines of the horizon graphics as you approached the edge of your sector. You could even enter tunnels at the edge of the sector, to move to other sectors as other animation methods switched in.
Woah Terranigma looks really cool! I had no idea the SNES could do that.
It's definitely a bucket list game, if you ever get the opportunity, it's a joy. I love the soundtrack too.
When you asked how Hyperzone was doing two layers I immediately thought of multiple tracks on the same sheet. So I was pretty happy when a couple later games used that, even if I was totally wrong about Hyperzone. :D
That Axelay mech boss is to me one of the most iconic schmup bosses of all time. They did a fantastic job on that one.
dunno how you made it but your voice sounds so nice, I really like it. It has space, it's clear and not flooded with lower frequencies :)
Killer stuff! Really liked the visual aids on the right side of the screen.
This is so awesome! The result of talent, limitations, and ingenuity!
Great video. Very informative and i loved the graphical explanations.
I love old console sorcery.
Imagine what could have been; Sonic the Hedgehog in Mode 7.
I had never seen this tenis game, the effect is so good
Today the only thing I see that programmers will really optimize are either last-generation console back-ports or mobile games that need to support a wide variety of devices. Back in 2013 I was working on Adobe AIR based Android slot games, and it was tricky to stay within the GPU texture map limitations and still get a real scrolling (not fake scrolling) slot game that ran at 60 fps even on 4-5 year old devices.
I learned quite a bit, thanks for the video!
I feel Super Off Road: The Baja worked with a low framerate because its big trucks on a raceway and the lower framerate sold the sense of weight that the cars had when moving having them be slower.
Ive never seen that tennis game, it looks fantastic
Just mind blowing.
Through i wish you mentioned speed racer as well because that game is slow as well but it makes amezing use of mode 7.
Great video. The deathstar trench run in super star wars was always impressive to me at the time. Not sure how it was done though.
Great video, thank you for sharing!
14:49 Impressive but man oh man I don't know how much I can take of this before feeling woozy
@White_Pointer Gaming regarding Melfand Stories: Final Fantasy 6 uses in its intro-sequence a similar technique to simulate the movement towards an location, in this case Narshe.
That's actually a mode 1 background that's slowly scrolling upwards, not a mode 7 background that's scaling.
>If you want to know more about how mode 7 works on technical level, I'll leave a link to a video by Retro Game Mechanics Explained in the description.
Thanks, I'll watch it for sure!
>Just be warned that you'll need to brush up on your linear algebra and trigonometry skills to fully understand it.
I've already told you that I'm going to watch it, Harry. You don't need to sell it to me!
😂
7:02 Yah! _Secret of Mana 2!_ The compass markings weren't there before, but are a nice touch!
That's the original Secret of Mana, it always had the compass markings ;) You're right that Seiken Densetsu 3, aka Trials of Mana, did not have the compass, but that had minimaps instead.
@@WhitePointerGaming I stand corrected!
Going from that tennis game that ran incredibly smooth considering all the movement going on to that racer that barely chugs along was quite the contrast, it really proves the point that it was all about how mode 7 was used and how much juice could be squeezed from the SNES before it started struggling to keep up.
You should've mentioned SOS (Septentrion in Japan)
That is to date the cleverest use of Mode 7 as a core mechanic I can think of
Would love to hear more about the elevation changes in The Empire Strikes Back and Super Off Road on the SNES. Always wondered back then if they ever would have released a Super Mario Kart 2 they used elevation in it. On the other hand we got Stunt Race FX which perhaps set the standard for Mario Kart 64.
Speaking of Super Empire Strikes Back, I always wondered how they achieved the effect in the Cloud City flying stage where you can pass the X-Wing above and below the cloud layer.
Awesome video!
*Absolutely awesome video!*
12:50 Does the Final Fantasy 6 intro, when the mechs walking towards Narshe, not doing the same? I don't know how its realized, but the end effect for the viewer is the same.
Love to see any analysis of SEGA Saturn’s use of multiple scaling and rotation effects in its 3D games
Super Offroad: The Baja was mind blowing back then. It was sooo fun too. I liked spending all my money on just nitro and boosting through the race super fast running over everything (those poor quad riders). My truck would be so effed up by the end of it if I even survived at all hahaha.
HyperZone was my jam back in 1992 😅
I’ve long wondered how they did Hoth in STESB! Nice one. Off Road feels like it’d have done better with a classic scrolling road. That snowboarding one looks good!
The SNES really was a powerhouse.
Best console ever made
Another sub man, thanks for this.
Thanks for the sub! :)
If I'm not mistaken, the BG in Mode 7 can't be animated, but you can do some tricks with the color palette to make it look like an animation. Many years ago I specialized in color palette animation to create really cool boot screens for Windows 9x. I had to learn how that FMV from Sonic 3D Blast on the Sega Genesis worked, but I was able to understand it thoroughly and create some cool stuff, placing all the frames inside the image, and using different colors to separate them. Then I set up the color palette and it would place the colors in the correct positions for each frame of the animation, giving the sensation of fluid animation.
Unfortunately those boot screens no longer exist because I uploaded them to a website that died many years ago, but I have a video on my channel of a customized version of Windows 98 with a boot screen with a cool reflection effect while Windows starts up.
Another incredibly laborious but brilliant technique is the way Elite works, with sprites with drawings, which can be arranged in various ways to look like vectors.
You can do animations just fine (see the bosses in Dennis the Menace) but palette effects definitely make some kinds of animations cheaper/easier to do.
Mode 7 backgrounds can absolutely be animated. Look at Bowser in Super Mario World, for example.
I would love to see an entire video devoted to Space Megaforce on SNES. In particular I want to understand what is going on with the first level boss. It is large, with a spherical portion in the center that disconnects and rotates. There appears to be tiles behind it though, as the ground below is quite detailed. Is the entire ground constructed of sprites, or did they somehow keep the last tile screen in memory before switching to mode 7? Just what is going on here? The scrolling stops and the screen flashes several times before the boss enters the screen. Is this to distract from what they are doing? I think the score, lives, bombs, etc. are built with sprites which leads me to the general question about this game. How is Compile pushing so many sprites around the screen so effortlessly while maintaining such fast performance? What did they know that other developers never figured out?
For the games that mirror the top and bottom, could they have changed the colour pallet between the top and bottom?
I had no idea how much I was underestimating the snes until watching this
The SNES will go down as one of, if not THE greatest console ever made.
Loved this
Thank you
I want to throw Wing Commander on SNES into the list! The dogfighting in the game has you engaging with ships, carriers and the like with Mode 7, and it is painstakingly used to emulate a full 3D environment. The closest contemporary the game has in terms of combat is WarpSpeed, which is considerably less detailed.
We might need a follow up video (:
You should take a look at "Jim Powers: The Lost Dimension In 3D", it used Mode 7 in creative ways. Each area was a different game type (top down, side shooter, side scroller, boss, etc.).
A game im actuelly very much so much hate, due the dizzy wrong way scrolling. Im perfer the original Amiga version all the way. OST is cool, well done and Steam version actuelly fixed the worst of it too.
I'd like to know how R-Type 3 did the bullets for the first boss. The first boss is in the distance firing the scaling and rotating bullets into the foreground. It's not 1 bullets at a time. There might be 4 bullets flying towards you at once.
14:58 I'm getting dizzy.
Also great breakdown. Loved the RGME series on it, and you do a really good job showing all the detailed examples.
Wasn't the "approaching destination" effect done in Super Star Wars for the land speeder level when you chase the Jawa Sandcrawler?
That tennis game takes every advantage of mode 7 and bothered to find a way to render geometry. It looks so good.
About Melfand Stories... doesn't Super Soccer use that kind of layout as well?
mode 7 is the real blasting processing
I sure love my self some Mode 7! Greetings from Sweden!
Hello Sweden! :)
I'd like to know how Super Return of Jedi pulled off the last 2 levels going into and escaping from the exploding 2nd Death Star. There appear to be 3 to 4 scaling and rotating layers, which should not be possible for mode 7. While the top and bottom walls could be explained by switching what's drawn on a scanline basis that doesn't explain the side walls which should be impossible to "layer" that way. The furthest "layer" looks like it might be drawn first to prevent having to draw over pixels multiple times, but that still wouldn't explain the "multilayers" on the side walls.There's a lot of black and the top and bottom of the screen, probably to save framerate, but this shouldn't be possible at all. The common methods don't seem to cover this example. I'm very curious what they did there.
I played Terranigma under the emulator. Of course I have seen many mode 7 effects but not this one yet and I was convinced that the emulator was displaying it incorrectly ! it was so weird.
Mode 7 is what made snes special