Lets admit it, if Nintendo had not used their strict policies on their developers and we had for example Capcom, Konami etc. developing their hits on the Master System the world would be a better place, at least for gamers.
But the reason they were developing for the Nintendo was precisely because of the strict policies - it meant they had the best games, and by extension, the biggest user base. So all the companies flocked to develop for Nintendo.
Our eyes would thank us, but not our ears. Unless Sega designed the SMS so that devs could combine the PSG and FM sounds like on MSX2 Sega were also not as focused on attracting third party developers at the time, not realizing the advantages
@@Domarius64 A cheaper option would've been the lower tuned AY-3 chip in the MSX, Atari ST and some arcade games. Although I do like the periodic noise of the SMS chip when used right
@@Alianger The SMS sound is just fine when composed by the right hands, just have a listen to Sonic games, Phantasy Star, Power Strike games, R-Type, Ghouls 'n Ghosts, Streets Of Rage games etc. The FM sound was also a plus. The SMS was overall a better console than the NES.
I know you guys used Golden Axe and Altered Beast as examples of the Master System's background tile swapping capability, but there's other Master System games you could take a look at if you already haven't that also take advantage of this trick. Space Harrier and Space Harrier 3D also use this to simulate forward 3D movement from a 3rd person perspective. Also if you take a look at After Burner, Zaxxon 3D, and certain parts of Thunder Blade, they take it a step further by combing the perspective background swaps with sprites going on at the same time. The only NES game I can think of that even comes close to this whole topic would be After Burner on the Famicom. Tengen did a really good job combing the tile swaps with the F-14 Tomcat and enemies as sprites.
When it comes to sound the Sega Master System released in the USA had the FM sound chip removed but some of the games still have the code to use it if you add it back in. The Japanese SMS and the computers it was based upon had the FM chip or you could get it as an add-on. There are boards you can buy with the Yamaha YM2413 FM synthesis sound chip on it and with some soldering you can add FM sound back to the USA SMS. Some US released games will actually use it when it is there. With the FM chip the sound of the SMS is better than NES, not counting NES carts with extra sound chips in them. Plus, the NES had more games with more amazing music composers on it so it's not hard to find NES music you'll like more than anything on the SMS even with FM sound included.
To add to this, if you have a Japanese Master System, or an exported one with the mod done, it's able to have both FM and PSG sound playing simultaneously (not sure if it's the case for all mods, but one I saw tested in another RUclips video seems to show it working). The original Japanese Mark III with the FM audio expansion can not output both at the same time, so if that's important to you and you were planning to import a Mark III, maybe go another route.
For a moment, I thought Castlevania was finall being ported to the SEGA Master System! How cool would that be for the home-brew scene w/perhaps using some of the hardware tricks in this video. Of course, it might have to receive a midi soundtrack so that it can sound even better than the original.
Yeah, I'd personally love to work with a strong Master System dev in the future to make such a game. Hopefully we can make that a reality in the future. -Mike
Wow, hey guys! It's the guy who asked the question :) I felt like checking back but it's been a while since I'm used to RUclipsrs just never replying to comments, wish I'd caught this sooner. Thanks so much for giving your insight on this, which has had me wondering (pun not intended) about my favourite game for years since I became a developer myself. With your insight, it sounds like the 3 main options are; programatic palette editing, wasting cart space, and tiles. I would bet it's the first option for the majority of the enemies, due to the consistency it's applied to all enemies, and no alternate palettes of the same enemy are shown at the same time, and they only change between scene changes (fade outs) and they are too intricately animated for tiles. If you look at a playthrough video you'll notice it's fairly consistent; the same enemy never appears as different colours at the same time, it's always after a fade out, that all snakes, or crabs, or whatever, will suddenly become an alternate colour of themselves. With the exception of the antlion, nice spotting! He's fixed on the screen, only has a 2 frame animation, and tellingly, is the ONLY enemy that appears as a different colour in the same scene between fade outs. So they would certainly have used tiles for him, I didn't think of that! They really got technically creative with this game.
@@bitbeamcannon2468 I still have my original copy. 10 year old me couldn't bear to let it go when we sold up the Sega for the super Nintendo, and my feelings were right! I'm so glad I did that...
Toward the end of the video you spoke about how Nintendo used helper chips built into cartridges . If you would use helper chips in SMS, how much closer would the SMS games be to looking like 16 bit games. Can you also expand past the limit of what a game could be? You'd see like 2 mega or 4 mega (bit) carts back in the day. Today can you get CD size (650 to 700 megabytes) in solid state fairly cheap. Can that be an option? By the way, I know nothing about programming but I do find what you guys spoke about very interesting.
Yes, with modern tech I'm sure crazy things could be added to a cartridge which would plug into a classic SMS and give it all kinds of crazy abilities, and the easiest of such abilities would be drastically more storage. Beyond that vague answer you'd really need to speak with an actual hardware genius to get specific concrete possibilities. Personally I'd settle for a sound chip to rival NES and tons more memory to hold game content like graphics and sound, but I'm guessing even entire other layers of scrolling, additional sprites, and faster processing might all be possible. I'd love to find out myself. Finger's crossed BitBeamCannon will, be able to make some SMS games in the future. We'd certainly love to.
@@bitbeamcannon2468 they HAD a sound chip to rival NES, unfortunately only in japan, with the sound module - wonder if a cheap version could be put in the cartridges
@@simonebernacchia5724 The trick to that question is the same now as it was back then. The only way it becomes affordable or cheap is if enough people will buy the game after they've produced it. Luckily for us crowdfunding can take away the risk from the creators of the game.
Yes, one could definitely do something like that; for example, there is a GBC homebrew that uses an ARM microprocessor embedded on the cartridge in order to implement an impressive Wolfenstein 3D port: m.ruclips.net/video/JfMpG3RW_kU/видео.html In theory, The same idea could be applicable to a SMS cartridge.
The tricky part is we want to finally show off what AGA games could have looked like, (because it was horribly under-utilized) but to do that we first need to create a demo of some kind, and we won't have time to do that for a while.
Thanks very much for the feedback. If I can ever find the right programmer to work with I'd love to create an entire Castlevania like game for SMS and really show off what the system is capable of. -Mike at BitBeamCannon
Little misleading haha. It's powerful in "color". Color != all graphics. It's just one aspect of graphics. If we're comparing to the NES, which seems to be the case here, the NES extended cart based vram/ppu interface makes it more powerful is so many more ways. I mean, I definitely know you can do tricks with planar and more planes (including transparency effects with animated tiles), and that's totally a thing.. but there are quite a few drawbacks on the SMS graphics as well in comparison. A bit of perspective doesn't hurt.
Hi @turboxray PCE, (This is Mike) While there are many ways for a retro system to be visually powerful or weak, since all games are visually a bunch of dots of color, then the amount of possible colors both on screen and in any given object is arguably one of the most important. To me the biggest weakness of the Master System is the inability to flip sprites on the fly, which the NES can do. In some cases this can be compensated for by hot-swapping portions of the sprite tile-bank on the fly when, for example a player sprite needs to turn, but obviously there are many important limits to this work-around and it can't be done in cases where there are many characters on screen, each of which might be facing left or right. The other two clear weaknesses of the SMS hardware vs the NES are the sound chip and the lower vertical screen resolution. By far the biggest weakness of the SMS vs the NES however is the game library, as a result of the relatively tiny potential profit a studio could make selling a SMS game vs an NES game. This resulted in many more and better studios making many more and better games for NES, regardless of hardware strengths or weaknesses. You seem to be comparing the SMS hardware against the NES with later generation games with helper-chips in the cartridges. If the SMS had a bigger market share they could have had helper chips to make the lack of sprite flipping irrelevant and as another viewer pointed out, improving the sound to rival the NES. Combining the SMS ability for all tiles to be 16 color (instead of 4 colors per 2x2 tiles) and each sprite to be 15 color instead of 3, along with the SMS massively powerful ability to draw multiple tile images to a single tile-spot in the background (see Golden Axe and Altered Beast) mean the SMS could have and sometimes did come much closer to look like it was producing 16 bit games. Imagine the difference in appearance if they had made R-type for NES as compared to this: ruclips.net/video/GsoXxT0Xybw/видео.html Going back to the point though of the strength of development teams, due to the bigger and more capable teams of developers having more time and money to throw at making games, there are many games on the NES which are technical marvels which likely seem to completely hide or shatter the power difference between the systems. Nemo: The Dream Master, Batman: Return of the Joker, and Shatterhand come to mind, along with many others. And again, all this nerdy graphics talk aside, game consoles are for playing games and having fun, and therefore I'd say the console offering the most fun games wins, regardless of how many colors per object. We'd love the chance to see how far we could push the SMS hardware, and how many new fun games we could make for the system. First we need to make it profitable to do so or win the lottery. finger's crossed. ;)
"the NES extended cart based vram/ppu interface makes it more powerful is so many more ways" Not really the NES then, is it? I hear this same argument with the SNES all the time. If it 's added to the system through the cartridge port, its not a capability of the stock machine. End of, unfortunately - doesn't matter how commonplace it was.
@@aqarius5740 Yes, it "is the NES then". If you want to make some contrived argument that you need to stick to "stock", for whatever that even means, then no - you would have to discount almost ALL game roms for multiple systems across 4th and 5th gen including the Neo Geo (and SMS games being limited to 48k of rom, etc). Mappers are just that; mappers. They've been around long before the NES and SMS, and are still in use to THIS DAY. I work on modern embedded hardware... it has external mappers. Canonical is... canonical. You don't get to simply dismiss a system that WAS designed with extension in mind and used as such (the NES is soo unique in this area).. because it doesn't fit your narrative of comparison.
Lets admit it, if Nintendo had not used their strict policies on their developers and we had for example Capcom, Konami etc. developing their hits on the Master System the world would be a better place, at least for gamers.
But the reason they were developing for the Nintendo was precisely because of the strict policies - it meant they had the best games, and by extension, the biggest user base. So all the companies flocked to develop for Nintendo.
Our eyes would thank us, but not our ears. Unless Sega designed the SMS so that devs could combine the PSG and FM sounds like on MSX2
Sega were also not as focused on attracting third party developers at the time, not realizing the advantages
@Alianger yeah, the SMS sound hardware is very high pitched and squealy..
@@Domarius64 A cheaper option would've been the lower tuned AY-3 chip in the MSX, Atari ST and some arcade games. Although I do like the periodic noise of the SMS chip when used right
@@Alianger The SMS sound is just fine when composed by the right hands, just have a listen to Sonic games, Phantasy Star, Power Strike games, R-Type, Ghouls 'n Ghosts, Streets Of Rage games etc. The FM sound was also a plus. The SMS was overall a better console than the NES.
I know you guys used Golden Axe and Altered Beast as examples of the Master System's background tile swapping capability, but there's other Master System games you could take a look at if you already haven't that also take advantage of this trick. Space Harrier and Space Harrier 3D also use this to simulate forward 3D movement from a 3rd person perspective. Also if you take a look at After Burner, Zaxxon 3D, and certain parts of Thunder Blade, they take it a step further by combing the perspective background swaps with sprites going on at the same time. The only NES game I can think of that even comes close to this whole topic would be After Burner on the Famicom. Tengen did a really good job combing the tile swaps with the F-14 Tomcat and enemies as sprites.
When it comes to sound the Sega Master System released in the USA had the FM sound chip removed but some of the games still have the code to use it if you add it back in. The Japanese SMS and the computers it was based upon had the FM chip or you could get it as an add-on.
There are boards you can buy with the Yamaha YM2413 FM synthesis sound chip on it and with some soldering you can add FM sound back to the USA SMS. Some US released games will actually use it when it is there. With the FM chip the sound of the SMS is better than NES, not counting NES carts with extra sound chips in them. Plus, the NES had more games with more amazing music composers on it so it's not hard to find NES music you'll like more than anything on the SMS even with FM sound included.
Great info! Thanks ChrisP-C64
To add to this, if you have a Japanese Master System, or an exported one with the mod done, it's able to have both FM and PSG sound playing simultaneously (not sure if it's the case for all mods, but one I saw tested in another RUclips video seems to show it working). The original Japanese Mark III with the FM audio expansion can not output both at the same time, so if that's important to you and you were planning to import a Mark III, maybe go another route.
For a moment, I thought Castlevania was finall being ported to the SEGA Master System! How cool would that be for the home-brew scene w/perhaps using some of the hardware tricks in this video.
Of course, it might have to receive a midi soundtrack so that it can sound even better than the original.
Yeah, I'd personally love to work with a strong Master System dev in the future to make such a game. Hopefully we can make that a reality in the future.
-Mike
ruclips.net/video/5Nm3RB-GdQg/видео.htmlsi=Fng01Me95BqLDQ51 this channel working on Castlevania among other games.
Wow, hey guys! It's the guy who asked the question :) I felt like checking back but it's been a while since I'm used to RUclipsrs just never replying to comments, wish I'd caught this sooner.
Thanks so much for giving your insight on this, which has had me wondering (pun not intended) about my favourite game for years since I became a developer myself.
With your insight, it sounds like the 3 main options are; programatic palette editing, wasting cart space, and tiles.
I would bet it's the first option for the majority of the enemies, due to the consistency it's applied to all enemies, and no alternate palettes of the same enemy are shown at the same time, and they only change between scene changes (fade outs) and they are too intricately animated for tiles. If you look at a playthrough video you'll notice it's fairly consistent; the same enemy never appears as different colours at the same time, it's always after a fade out, that all snakes, or crabs, or whatever, will suddenly become an alternate colour of themselves.
With the exception of the antlion, nice spotting! He's fixed on the screen, only has a 2 frame animation, and tellingly, is the ONLY enemy that appears as a different colour in the same scene between fade outs. So they would certainly have used tiles for him, I didn't think of that!
They really got technically creative with this game.
Yeah, it's one of the absolute best for the SMS, all around.
@@bitbeamcannon2468 I still have my original copy. 10 year old me couldn't bear to let it go when we sold up the Sega for the super Nintendo, and my feelings were right! I'm so glad I did that...
Toward the end of the video you spoke about how Nintendo used helper chips built into cartridges . If you would use helper chips in SMS, how much closer would the SMS games be to looking like 16 bit games. Can you also expand past the limit of what a game could be? You'd see like 2 mega or 4 mega (bit) carts back in the day. Today can you get CD size (650 to 700 megabytes) in solid state fairly cheap. Can that be an option? By the way, I know nothing about programming but I do find what you guys spoke about very interesting.
Yes, with modern tech I'm sure crazy things could be added to a cartridge which would plug into a classic SMS and give it all kinds of crazy abilities, and the easiest of such abilities would be drastically more storage. Beyond that vague answer you'd really need to speak with an actual hardware genius to get specific concrete possibilities. Personally I'd settle for a sound chip to rival NES and tons more memory to hold game content like graphics and sound, but I'm guessing even entire other layers of scrolling, additional sprites, and faster processing might all be possible. I'd love to find out myself.
Finger's crossed BitBeamCannon will, be able to make some SMS games in the future. We'd certainly love to.
@@bitbeamcannon2468 they HAD a sound chip to rival NES, unfortunately only in japan, with the sound module - wonder if a cheap version could be put in the cartridges
Interestingly: ruclips.net/video/2tiMrybmQaE/видео.html
@@simonebernacchia5724 The trick to that question is the same now as it was back then. The only way it becomes affordable or cheap is if enough people will buy the game after they've produced it. Luckily for us crowdfunding can take away the risk from the creators of the game.
Yes, one could definitely do something like that; for example, there is a GBC homebrew that uses an ARM microprocessor embedded on the cartridge in order to implement an impressive Wolfenstein 3D port:
m.ruclips.net/video/JfMpG3RW_kU/видео.html
In theory, The same idea could be applicable to a SMS cartridge.
Good to see a new Forensic Pixology after all this time. Still looking forward to when you do an AGA video.
The tricky part is we want to finally show off what AGA games could have looked like, (because it was horribly under-utilized) but to do that we first need to create a demo of some kind, and we won't have time to do that for a while.
Good video but could've showed more of what's shown in the thumbnail
Thanks very much for the feedback. If I can ever find the right programmer to work with I'd love to create an entire Castlevania like game for SMS and really show off what the system is capable of.
-Mike at BitBeamCannon
Little misleading haha. It's powerful in "color". Color != all graphics. It's just one aspect of graphics. If we're comparing to the NES, which seems to be the case here, the NES extended cart based vram/ppu interface makes it more powerful is so many more ways. I mean, I definitely know you can do tricks with planar and more planes (including transparency effects with animated tiles), and that's totally a thing.. but there are quite a few drawbacks on the SMS graphics as well in comparison. A bit of perspective doesn't hurt.
Hi @turboxray PCE,
(This is Mike)
While there are many ways for a retro system to be visually powerful or weak, since all games are visually a bunch of dots of color, then the amount of possible colors both on screen and in any given object is arguably one of the most important.
To me the biggest weakness of the Master System is the inability to flip sprites on the fly, which the NES can do.
In some cases this can be compensated for by hot-swapping portions of the sprite tile-bank on the fly when, for example a player sprite needs to turn, but obviously there are many important limits to this work-around and it can't be done in cases where there are many characters on screen, each of which might be facing left or right.
The other two clear weaknesses of the SMS hardware vs the NES are the sound chip and the lower vertical screen resolution.
By far the biggest weakness of the SMS vs the NES however is the game library, as a result of the relatively tiny potential profit a studio could make selling a SMS game vs an NES game. This resulted in many more and better studios making many more and better games for NES, regardless of hardware strengths or weaknesses.
You seem to be comparing the SMS hardware against the NES with later generation games with helper-chips in the cartridges. If the SMS had a bigger market share they could have had helper chips to make the lack of sprite flipping irrelevant and as another viewer pointed out, improving the sound to rival the NES.
Combining the SMS ability for all tiles to be 16 color (instead of 4 colors per 2x2 tiles) and each sprite to be 15 color instead of 3, along with the SMS massively powerful ability to draw multiple tile images to a single tile-spot in the background (see Golden Axe and Altered Beast) mean the SMS could have and sometimes did come much closer to look like it was producing 16 bit games. Imagine the difference in appearance if they had made R-type for NES as compared to this: ruclips.net/video/GsoXxT0Xybw/видео.html
Going back to the point though of the strength of development teams, due to the bigger and more capable teams of developers having more time and money to throw at making games, there are many games on the NES which are technical marvels which likely seem to completely hide or shatter the power difference between the systems.
Nemo: The Dream Master, Batman: Return of the Joker, and Shatterhand come to mind, along with many others.
And again, all this nerdy graphics talk aside, game consoles are for playing games and having fun, and therefore I'd say the console offering the most fun games wins, regardless of how many colors per object.
We'd love the chance to see how far we could push the SMS hardware, and how many new fun games we could make for the system. First we need to make it profitable to do so or win the lottery. finger's crossed. ;)
"the NES extended cart based vram/ppu interface makes it more powerful is so many more ways" Not really the NES then, is it? I hear this same argument with the SNES all the time. If it 's added to the system through the cartridge port, its not a capability of the stock machine. End of, unfortunately - doesn't matter how commonplace it was.
@@aqarius5740 Yes, it "is the NES then". If you want to make some contrived argument that you need to stick to "stock", for whatever that even means, then no - you would have to discount almost ALL game roms for multiple systems across 4th and 5th gen including the Neo Geo (and SMS games being limited to 48k of rom, etc). Mappers are just that; mappers. They've been around long before the NES and SMS, and are still in use to THIS DAY. I work on modern embedded hardware... it has external mappers. Canonical is... canonical. You don't get to simply dismiss a system that WAS designed with extension in mind and used as such (the NES is soo unique in this area).. because it doesn't fit your narrative of comparison.