GAMES SHOWN: 0:03 - Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom 0:06 - Muramasa: Demon Blade 0:08 - Symphony of the Night 0:11 - Hollow Knight 0:15 - Cuphead 0:18 - Metal Storm 0:20 - Super Metroid 0:22 - Yoshi's Island 0:26 - Shovel Knight 0:28 - Wonderboy: The Dragon's Trap 0:34 - Mega Man 7 0:36 - Kirby's Adventure 0:39 - Super Mario World 0:42 - Ori and the Blind Forest 0:44 - Shadow of the Beast 0:56 - GRIS 1:00 - Axiom Verge 1:30 - Mega Man 2 1:36 - Duck Tales 1:38 - Adventure of Link 1:43 - Shinobi 3 1:50 - A Link to the Past 1:56 - Mega Man X4 2:02 - Alien Hominid 2:09 - Red Dead Redemption 2:12 - Bomb Chicken 2:15 - Flinthook 2:38 - Wonderboy: The Dragon's Trap *2:42**: Indivisible* 2:47 - Inmost 2:51 - Hyper Light Drifter 6:49 - Strider 2 7:39 - Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon 9:19 - Pulseman 9:54 - Limbo 9:58 - Mighty Gunvolt Repeats not listed, nor ones titled in-video.
There would have been titles all over the place and it would've been time consuming and ugly, I find it easier to do it this way, this particular time 😊
It would have been interesting to add Oddworld: Abes Oddysee or any for the matter, I would like to know what you think on entering the other layers as actual platforms and how Parallax relates to this. Nevertheless, there are indeed too many games, can't blame you, these were nice selections. Great content! Thanks for the info so initiate ppl like me can learn a little bit more about the terms for those who have for so long played videogames but were never taught theoretically about these concepts because they were too busy not developing any game but, in fact, playing them.
Fun Fact: The Japanese version of Sonic 1 has more layers of parallax than the Western versions (it's technically a patched game as they fixed a few bugs like the spike glitch) But the Jim Power SNES game with the weird scrolling I believe was supposed to give a 3D effect, the game came with a pair of 3D glasses.
@@VideoGameAnimationStudy You can try by viewing the game with one eye naked and the other covered by a sunglass lens. Or you can buy glasses supporting the Pulfrich effect.
Parallax is such an important part of platformers. And for me the best examples of good parallax scrolling are the games where you don't notice it. I never noticed that Green Hill Zone has so many layers, it just felt natural to me. The first time I noticed parallax at all was with Super Ghouls 'N Ghosts in Stage 3. They had these massive towers that were part of the background layer which made me feel very dizzy. I am in awe of the amount of effort you put into this video. You really went the extra mile there with the examples. Especially Green Hill Zone with different parallax effects.
Super Ghouls' N Ghosts Stage 3 has a cool 3D tower effect. There the character runs around the towers, which are cylinders, obviously. Maybe you misunderstood what you saw and you were confused. This effect is similar to the final stage from the Battletoads on the NES.
Haha i remember playing super GnG with my dad a couple years ago and him telling how absolutely amazed He was by that Tower effect when He First played that stage
Same here. I had noticed some of the paralaxing, but never noticed the "lake" portion of it. Sega had their background in good arcade games, they knew their stuff.
I'm always blown away by how much effort you put into the visual explainers for these. The variations on Green Hill Zone to show off different types of parallax were ace.
And if the listing would be accurate also, that would be great... The first track is "Fighting In The Street" by VG Cover Junkies. ruclips.net/video/9GBSt4cQmCI/видео.html
@@Miicrowahvei what if I told you that's the original version of Fighting in the Street by Yuzo Koshiro in the original game in the video and not whatever you posted...
I heard they layer the game in 3D all though it’s a 2D game, maybe that’s why it looks so good in hollow knight. And I think I even learned that fact from this channel. Not sure
@@frytoesHollow Knight (and a lot of other modern 2D games like Ori) was made using Unity, which is a 3D engine so you get an unlimited amount of parallax for free just just by moving the different background planes backwards and forwards along the z-axis facing the camera. There’s a gif floating around online where one of the devs for Hollow Knight rotates the camera around in the editor and you can see the world break up into dozens of individual background planes all placed a various distances away from each other, combined with lots of fog planes and particle effects to increase the feeling of depth. The game also uses a camera depth of field effect which is another advantage of using a 3D engine to make a 2D game - not to dissimilar to how Disney’s multipane camera worked where they could physically move the layers of cels forwards and backwards from the camera view to zoom in or change the level of focus. Compare that with games made in a purely 2D engine where the scroll speed has to be manually specified for each layer, or games made for earlier systems like SNES/Genesis that put a hard cap on the amount of background layers to begin with (unless using line scrolling tricks like Sonic does).
I am currently in game development in college, and watching alot of your videos, as well as many other game analytics on youtube, have helped give me a better perspective on what I like in games and what works. I put some of this towards a level creation project, and I got compliments saying that my use of certain techniques were very advanced for a first year. So thank you for helping me with this, and keep up the good work.
Oh that's fantastic, I'm really pleased for you, and I'm glad to hear the channel is having a positive effect on your work! Thanks for letting me know, and I hope it all goes okay! Maybe I'll be reviewing your game one day!
I feel like they could have added a *touch* of parallax, maybe scroll the background 1px for every 50px of scrolling or something. Or maybe a very slow version of the cylindrical scrolling like was used in Sonic Mania. Would have sold the effect even more imo.
Green Hill has 2 layers of parallax, and Kirby and Bucky each have 1. What's happening in these games is, the scrolling is changed when the beam hits a particular scanline, allowing the background layer to be shifted by different amounts at different vertical positions on the screen, creating a faux parallax or perspective effect. This is the most common parallax effect on games for the NES, whose hardware only supported one background layer.
@@TechBlade9000 they said that's how it worked on the NES, but I'm pretty sure the Genesis can handle multiple BG layers fine, but I don't really know, though
@@TechBlade9000 oh aight, guess I was wrong 🤔 Have you tried playing the game on an emulator and disabling layers to see which ones make the parallax effect work? Could be sprites, maybe??? I literally have no idea how any of this works, I'm just curious too lmao
@@TechBlade9000 They did it by swapping graphics of those elements in the VRAM on the fly. It's not "true" parallax, but it's a neat little trick to fake one.
Another great example comes from the circus level in Freedom Planet 2. And then there's the camera that pans around to face Sonic's back when he goes through that giant loop in Palmtree Panic Zone.
In the first 3 minutes of your video I was thinking "That's strange. There are no Sonic examples for B-roll footage." I thought it was weird because Sonic was the first game that came to mind once I understood what parallax was. By the end of the video, whenever you mentioned Sonic I was like "Oh boy, he said Sonic! Here we go again!" It's all good though because I love Sonic! So the more examples the better!
Absolutely stunning video! Parallax in games is exactly the sort of topic unique to your channel. The visual guides are also really professional and smooth, great job.
Another finely crafted video, Dan! Really interesting! No racing games in there, mind! I love seeing it used not just for backgrounds but to give the illusion of 3D objects/plains closer to the foreground. It can look so effective.
Gah, I considered showing Mario Kart and/or F Zero, but didn't end up doing it in the end. Would've been good as an example of the reverse parallax! But you're right, it's also very important to show that depth when racing/driving. Cheers Ben!
@@VideoGameAnimationStudy What's notable about F-Zero and Super Mario Kart's parallax is that because they were rendered in Mode 7 they technically had only _one_ bitmap layer to work with for the backgrounds.
It’s fascinating seeing how devs tried to emulate the effect of 3D in racing games on hardware that could only really do 2D. It’s surprising how far just using horizontal line scrolling can get you.
Nothing annoys me more than when a parylax layer moves at the wrong speed and throws everything off. Specifically aquatic ruin zone. The greenery in the background actually moves faster than the game plane. It hurts my braiNn Also its a neat touch how in the original excite bike, the background moves faster than the foreground. It never made sense to me until I realized that I'm going around a rounded track. That was a fun realization
Super Mario Bros 3 in Super Mario All-Stars does this. Everything looks fine in the first level but you'll realize the clouds overlap the background graphics by level 2 and scroll the wrong rate. In the GBA port they removed horizontal scrolling from all the outdoor levels.
@@omegavladosovich6757 This is why I personally can't stand the All-stars versions now. Gotta have the NES versions, even if you have to fiddle with the cart and blow in it lol.
I get why it's annoying, but I know why it did that, though. You'll notice that the leaves you can pass through in the foreground scroll at the same speed. And I think that background layer you're talking about is connected to said foreground
I really love the section in Kirby Super Star (Ultra) in Milky Way Wishes: the final boss involves [Spoilers!] a really neat shooter section where you're in one of those cylinders, but they used perspective to make it way less jarring.
Gosh, this brings me back to the time when the Sega Genesis first came out and me playing the ORIGINAL Sonic the Hedgehog for the FIRST time and seeing all of the colorful graphics and parallax backgrounds, etc. It just made the experience of playing the Sega Genesis that much more immersive!!
Parallax scrolling is one of the main reasons why I love SEGA Genesis 16-bit graphics over the SNES. You see this a LOT in most of its games, like Shinobi 3, Sonic games, Vectorman, Dynamite Headdy, and ESPECIALLY Thunder Force IV, which sometimes reaches 12+ layers.
6:40 Glad you showcased the Monster Boy remake. It was the first time in a long time I just stared in awe at a parallax background, because it was done SO WELL. What really made it stand out, I think, is even though it's using what looks like flat layers, elements within the shot - like that big statue - are actually 3D, and so they rotate ever-so-slightly as they pass by. It's subtle, but it makes the scene look so much more real.
The Spinderella boss fight in Dynamite Headdy has some creative cylinder-based scrolling that is gameplay-motivated, AND it has some fun lampshading of parallax backgrounds (the game is themed as a stage play and so the background is all clearly just painted panels moving at different speeds)
@@VideoGameAnimationStudy Dynamite Headdy is one of the best games on Genesis/Megadrive, and simply one of the best platformers ever made. HIGHLY underrated. The whole stage that leads to this boss is themed around parallax-like mechanics on a purely vertical tower. Certainly worth a look : ruclips.net/video/BRXaviw38Ro/видео.html
My favourite examples are Thunder Force IV (Genesis) and Shadow of the Beast (Amiga). The first stages of these games look so living thanks to the parallax.
Amazing video as always! I already knew a lot about Parallax, but this still taught me a couple new things! Jim Powers was actually on the Amiga too and had an unreleased Genesis version. I remember hearing about how it was specifically designed for you to be in constant motion to achieve a specific kind of 3D effect and that you were supposed to wear some kind of 3D glasses too or something like that, but I'm a bit foggy on that.
One of my favorite examples of this is in Kirby’s Adventure where you rotate around Butter Building. The game comes at no additional cost with a membership to Nintendo Online on Nintendo Switch.
This is something that I have actually never thought about... the explanation you gave taught me something. Thanks! Now that I think about it, I remember the first time I played Fancy Pants Adventures 2 on armorgames. There were some areas that were really far back in the background with some collectibles. If you could find the secret areas the player character would actually become super small and become part of the background until you left the secret area. Some flash games I played in my early gaming days used parallax too I believe: Gretel and Hansel, Paws, Coma, Crypt Shyfter, etc.
One of my favourite examples of parallax scrolling is ice cap zone from sonic 3. When you are in the icy caverns the back ground is mostly flat but some sections open up into a really pretty ravine in the background leading to light from the outside. Another example from the stage is when you get outside and theres a massive lake with glaciers floating in it and as you move through the stage they bend with the perspective of the foreground camera.
Finally! I know exactly what it is! Thank you! Been hearing the term since the early 90s and sort of noticing it in games but wasn't exactly sure how it all broke down. Can you do "line scrolling" next? That one is even more mysterious for me. Can someone explain how they accomplished multi-layer parallax in some NES or TurboGraphx-16 games, considering that both systems only did background layer? I remember reading that TG-16 often used sprite to simulate a foreground and extra background layers... does that sound right? Also, even the Genesis does just two layers in hardware but many games, even the early ones like MUSHA, have multiple layers of parallax. In fact, I associate parallax with the Genesis even more than I do with the SNES, with had 3 hardware layers (I believe?). I'm guessing that the Genesis had enough raw CPU power and bandwidth to simulate all kinds of special effects that it was not really designed for?
I had no idea parallax scrolling was a thing. I mean, I knew video games had backgrounds but I didn't know there was a term for it or that parallax had such huge implications for immersiveness! And I never knew the legnths animator like Walt Disney went through to accomplish parallax! Fantastic video, thank you so much!
Please help. You showcased several examples of games that I don't know what they are, and I would love to check them out. Could you please list the game clips showed in the video?
I think the Spinderella fight in Dynamite Heady is a pretty good example of what you were talking about with cylindrical parallax. Boss in the center giving a real context of where you are, and you're always trying to keep her weakspot in a place relative to your position you can hit, pillars in the far foreground , checkerboard platform that is drawn in a way to sell it as a 3d object in the main layer and a layer between the boss and pillars in the background, during parts of the fight you'll be in that layer between the boss and the pillar in the background as the boss spins the stage as one of its attacks, and helping sell the effect is the fact the entire level before the fight has been ascending a tower first outside of it and then inside so your brain has been very fully adjusted to 'this is a cylindrical structure'. Then there's the far background which is literal set dressing that resembles three layered traditional parallax but is constantly moving like how a stage or cheap film production might create the effect, since the game commits to a stage/television show theming even harder than Mario 3 does (With some stages taking place behind the scenes, health represented by spotlights, and so forth), which doesn't help sell the illusion, at all, and instead looks really artificial and weird but it's meant to and done in a way that looks... Flat, just moving at different speeds.
Gunstar heroes used the same effect for one of the later bosses, you fight the core of a ship, the remake(?) Gunstar Super heroes on GBA has the same boss in addition to a ton of parallax and scaling effects throughout the game.
It's funny. I've played video games that had parallax scrolling in it before, including NES games; but I didn't stop to notice it until the first time I saw the beautiful sparkling lake (or is it an ocean?) That separates the foreground from the background in Green Hill Zone, back in 1991. That was the very first time I noticed that video games can have more than two dimensions, even if I didn't know the terminology at the time
I've always been fascinated with the idea of parallax scrolling ever since I first heard about it. What a weird but smart way to give 3D depth to a 2D environment.
i think that inverted parallax works best in small spaces, for the effect of the camera tilting to follow the action. in larger areas, it feels cylindrical, which (usually) isn't what you're going for (but can still be useful, if, say, your space is a cylinder)
Gunstar Heroes has a boss towards the end of the game that uses cylindrical Parallax Scrolling beautifully. Also fun fact: That spire in the middle of the Metal Sonic fight is actually a 3D model.
you've given me a new appreciation for something I would usually overlook on some games, now to replay some classic and admire the effort artist's put into the background
I guess that's my way of appreciating the scenery. Both in Video Games and Real Life. I can stare on a beautiful open wide terrain, feel the breeze of the air and just have everything move like when I see the sun further out with the mountains or buildings, and then have the ocean or sand near. It's the same way in games. I just love seeing open space areas and just seeing your characters fly or run around with the parallax happening
For very early (1987) example of complex parallax scrolling on the ZX Spectrum see Thanatos. There are nice additional effects such as water and paths that run from the background into the foreground. The castle wall at the end is particularly effective.
All the SOTN footage in this video was genuinely eye opening. I played the game about 2 years ago and I never realized the church area where you fight the sword boss went so far back, or that there's a giant floating eye watching you through a window in any section of the map
@@VideoGameAnimationStudy One good example of Parallax scrolling is the training montage in Punch-Out. The water animation uses parallax scrolling to simulate waves in the water.
It works for Death Egg Zone because like Launch Base, it is implied you are circling the outer rim of the Death Egg until you reach one of the secondary cores.
An odd example of parallax could be the amazingly large amount of layers of Platform Masters. While unreleased, official videos demonstrate just how intricate the layering is. The detail is down to what most people including myself to be excessive, but I've got serious respect for the amount of effort taken.
I think the narrative flow of your scripting for this was great! I'm also really impressed by all the demonstrative mock-ups you made for this; they can't have been quick to produce!
This is an awesome video dude, you really help put to words ideas that *people who have played a lot of videogames can probably "feel"* but wouldn't know the technical side to be able to explain it or really know what's happening , so you explaining it makes me feel smarter in a "AH-HA! yeah I know what he's talking about" kind of way!
I think Ristar is a great example of parallax in games, it looks good in screenshots but in motion it looks fantastic. Really adds character to each location and planet. One of the enemies in the second stage even attacks you from the background and then becomes a boss in the next stage!
Oh woah! That's very considerate of you. Apologies if the comment came off gruff, I'm a really big fan of parallax, and glad to see it get some good attention!
Personnaly I really love terraria's backgrounds and I love the idea of the clouds moving by themelves towards the left .It just adds so much Just realized I forgot to mention how awesome the video was !
parallax scrolling is such a weird thing to take note of but i always do and i ALWAYS love it, especially done well. it's one of my favorite visual aspect of hollow knight there is such an emphasis on parallax
Hey Dan. You have a nice voice, you're informative without solicitation, and the pictures are pretty (in the video). I'll probably end up rewatching your videos at most 5 times. Thanks for the channel :)
Parallax is great My favourite examples are manipulations of the sprites themselves to achieve a 3d feel, the vid showed a few examples actually. By establishing interrupts as a layer moves, one can have certain parts of the vertical space scroll faster/slower horizontally. Notice how older games with just the one layer had more depth in the back, how none of the sprites overlap? It's not something ya think about but fuck is it clever! Fighting games and a lot of platformers at the time also loved morphing the ground, classic examples being most of the floors in SF2 and Toy Story (look up Gamehut if ya haven't already!)
I've known about parallax scrolling for a bit now but I had no idea it is used in top-down games. That's a pretty clever use of it too. I'm definitely gonna check out some more examples of that. I think that area might be a bit untapped currently.
@@VideoGameAnimationStudy of course! I'm also really interested in learning more about animation because of you. You've made it interesting for me lol. Especially with Super Metroid.
The Jim Power one will make sense to you, as in why they did it this particular way, if you simply hold a pair of normal sunglasses in front of your eyes at an angle so only one eye is actually covered by the tinted lens, and then watch during any moments where the screen is moving and parallax scrolling is in effect....
I remember as a kid really understanding what parallax is in the dkc2 level, Lockjaw's Locker. It has horizontal parallax, and vertical parallax (by way of the fx chip.) Since it was an underwater level, you could really watch and understand how the relative speed of each part of the image responded to where you moved the camera.
I was looking for a comment like this. Donkey Kong Country 2 blows my mind with some of its background effects. I can’t say the artstyle they used in the series is my absolute favourite on the super nes, but neither can I deny that the people at Rare really pushed the hardware to some jaw dropping results.
I've always been impressed by that parallax scrolling in the NES game Metal Storm. One example of weird parallax scrolling for me was in Castlevania: Bloodlines; the first section of the Versailles Palace level (5) has some foreground scrolling that is "cut off" when you get to the fountain. It's hard to explain, but it just looks wrong.
There was a Super Mario World rom hack call Call of Cthulhu in which there is a level that litterally uses the platforms that are scolling on the paralax as walkable platforms. It becomes sort of a puzzle level where you have to take into account how slow or fast the platforms scroll in order to make the jumps and not fall off. It makes for a really cool dynamic between the player and the level, like the level itself is against you and trying to make you slip up.
You did well explaining parallax and showing how it works, the Sonic 1 example was some great editing. Some examples of parallax that stood out to me: Axelay has a unique way of implementing parallax, it creates a pseudo 3D kind of depth. Panorama cotton; the whole game looks like snes mode 7 but it's all 2D layers that create an illusion of depth, stage 3 has the most detail. Water surfaces in Sonic 3 Hydrocity and DKC2 have an above and below parallax view, it works well I haven't seen it in many other games. *
Thanks for the response! Never mind on that last one, I haven't played that game in a long time I thought I remembered parallax but it's not, I misremembered. Macross on snes is a better example, also mickey mania on genesis/megadrive Batman return of the joker on nes had a lot of parallax backgrounds,
I remember Rayman origins had wonderful fore-ground and back-ground parallax that made everything that much more beautiful. ah man I haven't played that game in years
It's quite simple but i was amazed as a kid at Mortal Kombat's use if parallax to create depth in the floors. Also hydrocity act1 (not act 2) in Sonic 3 used parallax to extend the surface of the water far into the background
achieving layer scrolling on hardware that didn't easily support it(the 8bit consoles) probably took more development time and cost (extra cartridge hardware + programming time) than was necessary in the hope it paid off which in some cases it probably did't if the gameplay just was't there. 3d games are a bit of a catch area as traditionally past a certain point objects become a billboard (least wastage of processing power on things that normally aren't noticed are no longer 3d) or early 3d's infamous 'fog', but outside that there is no parallel movement as everything is naturally drawn (unless its 3d floating on 2d background)
Fantastic Video. Not only did I learn something new about what I already loved, but the entire presentation was flawlessly done and creative to the point where I don't know how you did what you did.
If you want an example of one gone weird (but not Jim power bad), Phantasy Star III comes to mind. The top and bottom half of the battle scenes scroll in opposite directions (it makes me feel dizzy). This was removed from the English release making it a Japanese exclusive feature (this isn't like Sonic 1 where the English release was an earlier build missing the cloud layer) although a romhack that restores this effect does exist.
I always loved Mount Ordeals in Final Fantasy IV. I remember seeing it in 1998 (well into the age of the PSX and N64) and just being amazed by it despite it being primitive and 16 bits.
I would have liked if you had talked about the difference between "sandwich" parallax like green hill zone and true multiple layer parallax like in most modern games including the alien hominid shots you showed. For those wondering, if you look at the sonic example again you'll see that the background is actually a single image with horizontal pixel layers scrolling horizontally at different rates but with no vertical movement at all. Slices never obscure the layer "behind" them.
There are some lovely parallax effects in the PS1 version of the original Rayman. It varies from level to level, but there are up to four layers of background, plus the layer the gameplay is happening in, and another layer that occasionally crops up in the foreground. They all scroll independently, and the differences in speed sometimes suggest that the layers are extremely far apart, which really creates a sense that we're exploring a vast world even when the levels themselves are relatively small and simple.
I love how the death egg zone has no paralax. The contrast with the rest of the game really makes it stand out as a daunting imposing place. Probably wouldn't work as well if it weren't for how the rest of the game handles parallax so well.
Minish Cap has a good example of the background scrolling the wrong way whenever there's a pit to a room below. It makes it feel like the camera is panning left but scrolling right at the same time. It's really weird once you know it's there.
Glad you are making such an incredible work, dude. I contacted you like... 6 months ago? I told you I wanted to create a channel about game design and you encouraged me to follow that path. Guess what? I am pretty near to complete the first video. It probably has lots of mistakes and errors, but I hope I will do something better in the forecoming videos. Thanks a lot dude, your channel is gorgeous. Pride to be one of your first Patreon backers!
Dan Root: Video Game Animation Study: I'd be willing to translate it for Portuguese, since brazilian folks seems to be interested on the subject lately.
Oh cool! I think I have *community contributions* switched on, feel free to add subtitles of you like, that's be very much appreciated! Let me know if you can't access it.
Yet another Sonic example, but I always liked how they used vertical parallax in Hydrocity Zone so the water's surface appeared to stretch to the horizon in the proper perspective, whether you were above or below the surface.
I first noticed parallax scrolling in the Master System game Choplifter I believe. I thought wow that's cool, I've never seen my NES do that. Then I really noticed it in Sonic CD when I got it, particularly the Stardust Speedway bad future stage. I don't remember how many layers of scrolling red clouds there were, but I remember it seeming like a lot and I was pretty impressed by that.
I LOVED this. As a game artist myself, it would've been awesome to have a video like this a couple of years ago, to easily explain to everyone in the team the importance of having parallax in our games. We are now making Sky Racket, a Shoot 'em up/Block Breaker game filled with parallax hahahah There's one other impressive foreground parallax not shown here, from Sega and Disney's World of Illusion Starring Mickey & Donald. Such beautiful, detailed and rich foreground art!
My favourite application of parallax (and line scrolling on the Genesis VDP) is Ranger-X. That game looks so good and has a lot of neat effects and tricks.
Not sure how common that actually is (heard diverging opinions on this) but at least when it comes to Shovel Knight they made that game in a 3D engine, partly because getting a nice and proper looking parallax effect is easier when you can just put background elements at a desired position and change the size of it as you see fit (as opposed to fiddling with background image settings). The game is shown in an orthographic view, so it still looks completely 2D even though there are several layers at work. So yeah, from a purely technical standpoint you could call Shovel Knight a 3D game.
Oh yeah, that was in Boundary Break recently wasn't it! I should've bright that route of parallax up, it didn't occur to me. It's definitely a nice way of going about getting parallax just right!
Some of the worst examples of misunderstood parallax come from 2.5D racing games. F-Zero, Mario Kart, Sonic CD special stages, etc. The developers apply parallax scrolling to the background layers when the camera rotates. It's a particularly funny concept when you think about applying it to real life: "That mountain is blocking the sunset." "Don't worry, just rotate and it won't be anymore."
@@VideoGameAnimationStudy It would be perfectly realistic if they'd just skipped the parallax. That doesn't happen when you turn in real life. Only when you move sideways. I think the only reason for doing it was just to show off the hardware capabilities.
GAMES SHOWN:
0:03 - Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom
0:06 - Muramasa: Demon Blade
0:08 - Symphony of the Night
0:11 - Hollow Knight
0:15 - Cuphead
0:18 - Metal Storm
0:20 - Super Metroid
0:22 - Yoshi's Island
0:26 - Shovel Knight
0:28 - Wonderboy: The Dragon's Trap
0:34 - Mega Man 7
0:36 - Kirby's Adventure
0:39 - Super Mario World
0:42 - Ori and the Blind Forest
0:44 - Shadow of the Beast
0:56 - GRIS
1:00 - Axiom Verge
1:30 - Mega Man 2
1:36 - Duck Tales
1:38 - Adventure of Link
1:43 - Shinobi 3
1:50 - A Link to the Past
1:56 - Mega Man X4
2:02 - Alien Hominid
2:09 - Red Dead Redemption
2:12 - Bomb Chicken
2:15 - Flinthook
2:38 - Wonderboy: The Dragon's Trap
*2:42**: Indivisible*
2:47 - Inmost
2:51 - Hyper Light Drifter
6:49 - Strider 2
7:39 - Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon
9:19 - Pulseman
9:54 - Limbo
9:58 - Mighty Gunvolt
Repeats not listed, nor ones titled in-video.
I genuinely appreciate this! Although, wouldn't be easier for you to add title cards during editing of the video?
There would have been titles all over the place and it would've been time consuming and ugly, I find it easier to do it this way, this particular time 😊
It would have been interesting to add Oddworld: Abes Oddysee or any for the matter, I would like to know what you think on entering the other layers as actual platforms and how Parallax relates to this.
Nevertheless, there are indeed too many games, can't blame you, these were nice selections. Great content! Thanks for the info so initiate ppl like me can learn a little bit more about the terms for those who have for so long played videogames but were never taught theoretically about these concepts because they were too busy not developing any game but, in fact, playing them.
Parallax effect combined the stereoscopic 3D effect of the 3DS is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen in a videogame :D
This comment is why I liked your video :) (Plus I'm sure it's a good video)
Fun Fact: The Japanese version of Sonic 1 has more layers of parallax than the Western versions (it's technically a patched game as they fixed a few bugs like the spike glitch)
But the Jim Power SNES game with the weird scrolling I believe was supposed to give a 3D effect, the game came with a pair of 3D glasses.
Did they use the extra layer in iOS ports of Sonic?
And I've been told this about Jim Power, I'll have to grab a pair of glasses and try it!
Wasn't the iOS Sonic an all new game from the ground up? But jump on some spikes, if you're invincible for a few seconds, it's the Japanese one.
Ahh okay
They weren't really 3D glasses but glasses with a neutral filter on one eye to support the Pulfrich effect.
@@VideoGameAnimationStudy You can try by viewing the game with one eye naked and the other covered by a sunglass lens. Or you can buy glasses supporting the Pulfrich effect.
Parallax is such an important part of platformers. And for me the best examples of good parallax scrolling are the games where you don't notice it. I never noticed that Green Hill Zone has so many layers, it just felt natural to me.
The first time I noticed parallax at all was with Super Ghouls 'N Ghosts in Stage 3. They had these massive towers that were part of the background layer which made me feel very dizzy.
I am in awe of the amount of effort you put into this video. You really went the extra mile there with the examples. Especially Green Hill Zone with different parallax effects.
Hey thanks so much, I'm very pleased with the quality of this video!
And yeah, like all things, if it's good and doing its job, it'll be invisible.
Super Ghouls' N Ghosts Stage 3 has a cool 3D tower effect. There the character runs around the towers, which are cylinders, obviously. Maybe you misunderstood what you saw and you were confused.
This effect is similar to the final stage from the Battletoads on the NES.
Haha i remember playing super GnG with my dad a couple years ago and him telling how absolutely amazed He was by that Tower effect when He First played that stage
Same here. I had noticed some of the paralaxing, but never noticed the "lake" portion of it. Sega had their background in good arcade games, they knew their stuff.
I'm always blown away by how much effort you put into the visual explainers for these. The variations on Green Hill Zone to show off different types of parallax were ace.
Thank you! Well I figure I may as well put my animation abilities to good use!
Thanks you for actually listing your music.
And if the listing would be accurate also, that would be great...
The first track is "Fighting In The Street" by VG Cover Junkies.
ruclips.net/video/9GBSt4cQmCI/видео.html
@@Miicrowahvei what if I told you that's the original version of Fighting in the Street by Yuzo Koshiro in the original game in the video and not whatever you posted...
@@Miicrowahvei
But that track is used in Stage 1 of Street Fighter, no?
I never thought anyone would use a mobile game’s soundtrack…
Hollow Knight takes the idea of parallax to its extreme. And it's amazing.
It really does! I wish I'd have played it when making this video.
I heard they layer the game in 3D all though it’s a 2D game, maybe that’s why it looks so good in hollow knight. And I think I even learned that fact from this channel. Not sure
@@frytoesHollow Knight (and a lot of other modern 2D games like Ori) was made using Unity, which is a 3D engine so you get an unlimited amount of parallax for free just just by moving the different background planes backwards and forwards along the z-axis facing the camera. There’s a gif floating around online where one of the devs for Hollow Knight rotates the camera around in the editor and you can see the world break up into dozens of individual background planes all placed a various distances away from each other, combined with lots of fog planes and particle effects to increase the feeling of depth. The game also uses a camera depth of field effect which is another advantage of using a 3D engine to make a 2D game - not to dissimilar to how Disney’s multipane camera worked where they could physically move the layers of cels forwards and backwards from the camera view to zoom in or change the level of focus.
Compare that with games made in a purely 2D engine where the scroll speed has to be manually specified for each layer, or games made for earlier systems like SNES/Genesis that put a hard cap on the amount of background layers to begin with (unless using line scrolling tricks like Sonic does).
I am currently in game development in college, and watching alot of your videos, as well as many other game analytics on youtube, have helped give me a better perspective on what I like in games and what works. I put some of this towards a level creation project, and I got compliments saying that my use of certain techniques were very advanced for a first year. So thank you for helping me with this, and keep up the good work.
Oh that's fantastic, I'm really pleased for you, and I'm glad to hear the channel is having a positive effect on your work! Thanks for letting me know, and I hope it all goes okay!
Maybe I'll be reviewing your game one day!
I actually think the static background for Death Egg zone works. It really sells the sheer size of the space station
I feel like they could have added a *touch* of parallax, maybe scroll the background 1px for every 50px of scrolling or something. Or maybe a very slow version of the cylindrical scrolling like was used in Sonic Mania. Would have sold the effect even more imo.
Green Hill has 2 layers of parallax, and Kirby and Bucky each have 1. What's happening in these games is, the scrolling is changed when the beam hits a particular scanline, allowing the background layer to be shifted by different amounts at different vertical positions on the screen, creating a faux parallax or perspective effect. This is the most common parallax effect on games for the NES, whose hardware only supported one background layer.
I still want to know how they did actual parallax in Sonic 3
@@TechBlade9000 they said that's how it worked on the NES, but I'm pretty sure the Genesis can handle multiple BG layers fine, but I don't really know, though
@@ProfessionalismTrash No the Genesis had 1 parallax layer and 1 foreground layer while the SNES had double that
@@TechBlade9000 oh aight, guess I was wrong 🤔
Have you tried playing the game on an emulator and disabling layers to see which ones make the parallax effect work?
Could be sprites, maybe???
I literally have no idea how any of this works, I'm just curious too lmao
@@TechBlade9000 They did it by swapping graphics of those elements in the VRAM on the fly. It's not "true" parallax, but it's a neat little trick to fake one.
The Metal Sonic fight in Mania will forever stand out to me as a gorgeous example of cylindrical parallax.
Another great example comes from the circus level in Freedom Planet 2.
And then there's the camera that pans around to face Sonic's back when he goes through that giant loop in Palmtree Panic Zone.
I think parallax is not something small, it adds SO MUCH for me in games - while just being a few images moving.
Great video!
Thanks! Yeah, parallax is really important for me.
Parallax is absolutely small
What do you mean?
@@VideoGameAnimationStudy I was just playing.
In the first 3 minutes of your video I was thinking "That's strange. There are no Sonic examples for B-roll footage." I thought it was weird because Sonic was the first game that came to mind once I understood what parallax was.
By the end of the video, whenever you mentioned Sonic I was like "Oh boy, he said Sonic! Here we go again!" It's all good though because I love Sonic! So the more examples the better!
Yeah haha, I can imagine it's annoying for people who aren't into Sonic, but the hand understand parallax so well.
Absolutely stunning video! Parallax in games is exactly the sort of topic unique to your channel. The visual guides are also really professional and smooth, great job.
Hey thank you so much! I'm glad your enjoyed it!
Another finely crafted video, Dan! Really interesting! No racing games in there, mind! I love seeing it used not just for backgrounds but to give the illusion of 3D objects/plains closer to the foreground. It can look so effective.
Gah, I considered showing Mario Kart and/or F Zero, but didn't end up doing it in the end. Would've been good as an example of the reverse parallax!
But you're right, it's also very important to show that depth when racing/driving.
Cheers Ben!
@@VideoGameAnimationStudy What's notable about F-Zero and Super Mario Kart's parallax is that because they were rendered in Mode 7 they technically had only _one_ bitmap layer to work with for the backgrounds.
It’s fascinating seeing how devs tried to emulate the effect of 3D in racing games on hardware that could only really do 2D. It’s surprising how far just using horizontal line scrolling can get you.
Nothing annoys me more than when a parylax layer moves at the wrong speed and throws everything off.
Specifically aquatic ruin zone.
The greenery in the background actually moves faster than the game plane.
It hurts my braiNn
Also its a neat touch how in the original excite bike, the background moves faster than the foreground.
It never made sense to me until I realized that I'm going around a rounded track.
That was a fun realization
Yeah, it can make or break a game's art in my opinion.
Super Mario Bros 3 in Super Mario All-Stars does this. Everything looks fine in the first level but you'll realize the clouds overlap the background graphics by level 2 and scroll the wrong rate. In the GBA port they removed horizontal scrolling from all the outdoor levels.
@@omegavladosovich6757 This is why I personally can't stand the All-stars versions now. Gotta have the NES versions, even if you have to fiddle with the cart and blow in it lol.
I get why it's annoying, but I know why it did that, though. You'll notice that the leaves you can pass through in the foreground scroll at the same speed. And I think that background layer you're talking about is connected to said foreground
Some of that Shinobi animation is just... delicious. Fantastic video as always man!
Thank you! Yeah Shinobi is fantastic
I really love the section in Kirby Super Star (Ultra) in Milky Way Wishes: the final boss involves
[Spoilers!]
a really neat shooter section where you're in one of those cylinders, but they used perspective to make it way less jarring.
Gosh, this brings me back to the time when the Sega Genesis first came out and me playing the ORIGINAL Sonic the Hedgehog for the FIRST time and seeing all of the colorful graphics and parallax backgrounds, etc. It just made the experience of playing the Sega Genesis that much more immersive!!
Parallax scrolling is one of the main reasons why I love SEGA Genesis 16-bit graphics over the SNES. You see this a LOT in most of its games, like Shinobi 3, Sonic games, Vectorman, Dynamite Headdy, and ESPECIALLY Thunder Force IV, which sometimes reaches 12+ layers.
Yeah, I think the Sega Mega Drive did a lot of this in its day, definitely resulting in some of the most beautiful looking games of that era.
6:40 Glad you showcased the Monster Boy remake. It was the first time in a long time I just stared in awe at a parallax background, because it was done SO WELL. What really made it stand out, I think, is even though it's using what looks like flat layers, elements within the shot - like that big statue - are actually 3D, and so they rotate ever-so-slightly as they pass by. It's subtle, but it makes the scene look so much more real.
Yeah, it's a nice little detail that just helps that immersiveness.
The Spinderella boss fight in Dynamite Headdy has some creative cylinder-based scrolling that is gameplay-motivated, AND it has some fun lampshading of parallax backgrounds (the game is themed as a stage play and so the background is all clearly just painted panels moving at different speeds)
Oh that sounds cool, I'll go check it out now!
Okay yeah that's really creative, I wish I'd have known about that before making this video 😅
@@VideoGameAnimationStudy Dynamite Headdy is one of the best games on Genesis/Megadrive, and simply one of the best platformers ever made. HIGHLY underrated. The whole stage that leads to this boss is themed around parallax-like mechanics on a purely vertical tower. Certainly worth a look : ruclips.net/video/BRXaviw38Ro/видео.html
My favourite examples are Thunder Force IV (Genesis) and Shadow of the Beast (Amiga). The first stages of these games look so living thanks to the parallax.
ThunderForce is truly ace
Amazing video as always! I already knew a lot about Parallax, but this still taught me a couple new things! Jim Powers was actually on the Amiga too and had an unreleased Genesis version. I remember hearing about how it was specifically designed for you to be in constant motion to achieve a specific kind of 3D effect and that you were supposed to wear some kind of 3D glasses too or something like that, but I'm a bit foggy on that.
Thank you!
Ha, that's interesting about the glasses for Jim Powers! Can't imagine that did very well
One of my favorite examples of this is in Kirby’s Adventure where you rotate around Butter Building. The game comes at no additional cost with a membership to Nintendo Online on Nintendo Switch.
This is something that I have actually never thought about... the explanation you gave taught me something. Thanks!
Now that I think about it, I remember the first time I played Fancy Pants Adventures 2 on armorgames. There were some areas that were really far back in the background with some collectibles. If you could find the secret areas the player character would actually become super small and become part of the background until you left the secret area.
Some flash games I played in my early gaming days used parallax too I believe: Gretel and Hansel, Paws, Coma, Crypt Shyfter, etc.
One of my favourite examples of parallax scrolling is ice cap zone from sonic 3. When you are in the icy caverns the back ground is mostly flat but some sections open up into a really pretty ravine in the background leading to light from the outside. Another example from the stage is when you get outside and theres a massive lake with glaciers floating in it and as you move through the stage they bend with the perspective of the foreground camera.
Yeah I've always liked the rotating glaciers in the lake!
My favorite example of cylinder parallax is the Spinderella boss fight in Dynamite Headdy. The top of that tower feels fully 3D.
Finally! I know exactly what it is! Thank you! Been hearing the term since the early 90s and sort of noticing it in games but wasn't exactly sure how it all broke down. Can you do "line scrolling" next? That one is even more mysterious for me. Can someone explain how they accomplished multi-layer parallax in some NES or TurboGraphx-16 games, considering that both systems only did background layer? I remember reading that TG-16 often used sprite to simulate a foreground and extra background layers... does that sound right? Also, even the Genesis does just two layers in hardware but many games, even the early ones like MUSHA, have multiple layers of parallax. In fact, I associate parallax with the Genesis even more than I do with the SNES, with had 3 hardware layers (I believe?). I'm guessing that the Genesis had enough raw CPU power and bandwidth to simulate all kinds of special effects that it was not really designed for?
I had no idea parallax scrolling was a thing. I mean, I knew video games had backgrounds but I didn't know there was a term for it or that parallax had such huge implications for immersiveness! And I never knew the legnths animator like Walt Disney went through to accomplish parallax! Fantastic video, thank you so much!
Thank you so much, I'm glad your enjoyed it!
Please help.
You showcased several examples of games that I don't know what they are, and I would love to check them out.
Could you please list the game clips showed in the video?
I agree.
I'll try. There's lots of clips, I have named some of the more obscure ones in the bottom left.
@@VideoGameAnimationStudy
I recognized most.
I just need these...
0:04 & 3:04
0:56 & 6:00
2:16
2:42
2:48
The first three are Monster boy and the cursed kingdom, Gris and Flinthook the last two I’m still looking for. Hope that helps :)
Can you activate the subtitles? Please!!
I think the Spinderella fight in Dynamite Heady is a pretty good example of what you were talking about with cylindrical parallax.
Boss in the center giving a real context of where you are, and you're always trying to keep her weakspot in a place relative to your position you can hit, pillars in the far foreground , checkerboard platform that is drawn in a way to sell it as a 3d object in the main layer and a layer between the boss and pillars in the background, during parts of the fight you'll be in that layer between the boss and the pillar in the background as the boss spins the stage as one of its attacks, and helping sell the effect is the fact the entire level before the fight has been ascending a tower first outside of it and then inside so your brain has been very fully adjusted to 'this is a cylindrical structure'.
Then there's the far background which is literal set dressing that resembles three layered traditional parallax but is constantly moving like how a stage or cheap film production might create the effect, since the game commits to a stage/television show theming even harder than Mario 3 does (With some stages taking place behind the scenes, health represented by spotlights, and so forth), which doesn't help sell the illusion, at all, and instead looks really artificial and weird but it's meant to and done in a way that looks... Flat, just moving at different speeds.
Someone else suggested this and I just checked it out - take interesting and creative use of parallax, I want to see more of that!!
Gunstar heroes used the same effect for one of the later bosses, you fight the core of a ship, the remake(?) Gunstar Super heroes on GBA has the same boss in addition to a ton of parallax and scaling effects throughout the game.
It's funny. I've played video games that had parallax scrolling in it before, including NES games; but I didn't stop to notice it until the first time I saw the beautiful sparkling lake (or is it an ocean?) That separates the foreground from the background in Green Hill Zone, back in 1991. That was the very first time I noticed that video games can have more than two dimensions, even if I didn't know the terminology at the time
I've always been fascinated with the idea of parallax scrolling ever since I first heard about it. What a weird but smart way to give 3D depth to a 2D environment.
Nice video! The exploded parallax view was really well executed. I just wish it didn't invoke motion sickness so often...
Thanks, and yeah, agreed.
i think that inverted parallax works best in small spaces, for the effect of the camera tilting to follow the action. in larger areas, it feels cylindrical, which (usually) isn't what you're going for (but can still be useful, if, say, your space is a cylinder)
Gunstar Heroes has a boss towards the end of the game that uses cylindrical Parallax Scrolling beautifully.
Also fun fact: That spire in the middle of the Metal Sonic fight is actually a 3D model.
Yeah I thought so, I think I've seen the model by itself somewhere.
And yeah I think someone else has suggested that bods fight too, looks great!
Just to be clear, I’m talking about the boss at the end of this level:
ruclips.net/video/SGySAAlJN2Y/видео.html
Never really noticed parallax before until now. Thanks for doing a video about it. I'm definitely going to notice it more now!
I'm glad to have helped you notice something nice 😊
you've given me a new appreciation for something I would usually overlook on some games, now to replay some classic and admire the effort artist's put into the background
I guess that's my way of appreciating the scenery. Both in Video Games and Real Life.
I can stare on a beautiful open wide terrain, feel the breeze of the air and just have everything move like when I see the sun further out with the mountains or buildings, and then have the ocean or sand near.
It's the same way in games. I just love seeing open space areas and just seeing your characters fly or run around with the parallax happening
This was very interesting!! Thanks for the video, it's really interesting seeing how games are put together!
For very early (1987) example of complex parallax scrolling on the ZX Spectrum see Thanatos. There are nice additional effects such as water and paths that run from the background into the foreground. The castle wall at the end is particularly effective.
ruclips.net/video/FOVczir_y_A/видео.html
All the SOTN footage in this video was genuinely eye opening. I played the game about 2 years ago and I never realized the church area where you fight the sword boss went so far back, or that there's a giant floating eye watching you through a window in any section of the map
Yeah, it's good some really great backgrounds here and there!
I've always found parallax scrolling amazing... Fascinating... Thanks for the in-depth look, Dan! =D
Ha, nice pun! I love a decent bit of parallax!
@@VideoGameAnimationStudy One good example of Parallax scrolling is the training montage in Punch-Out. The water animation uses parallax scrolling to simulate waves in the water.
Oh cool, is that the original NES one?
@@VideoGameAnimationStudy Yeah. =)
It works for Death Egg Zone because like Launch Base, it is implied you are circling the outer rim of the Death Egg until you reach one of the secondary cores.
An odd example of parallax could be the amazingly large amount of layers of Platform Masters. While unreleased, official videos demonstrate just how intricate the layering is. The detail is down to what most people including myself to be excessive, but I've got serious respect for the amount of effort taken.
Thanks - I'll check it out!
I think the narrative flow of your scripting for this was great! I'm also really impressed by all the demonstrative mock-ups you made for this; they can't have been quick to produce!
Hey thanks so much! I was pleased with this episode, and the graphics weren't too difficult, relatively.
This is an awesome video dude, you really help put to words ideas that *people who have played a lot of videogames can probably "feel"* but wouldn't know the technical side to be able to explain it or really know what's happening , so you explaining it makes me feel smarter in a "AH-HA! yeah I know what he's talking about" kind of way!
Hey thanks so much, I'm glad it helped inform _and_ entertain!
I think Ristar is a great example of parallax in games, it looks good in screenshots but in motion it looks fantastic. Really adds character to each location and planet. One of the enemies in the second stage even attacks you from the background and then becomes a boss in the next stage!
I was positively shocked that Rocket Knight Adventures did not make this. Some of the flight sections had around NINE layers of parallax.
Hadn't played Rocket Knight Adventures, mine was Sparkster.
I'll have to check that out! Thanks!
Oh woah! That's very considerate of you. Apologies if the comment came off gruff, I'm a really big fan of parallax, and glad to see it get some good attention!
Personnaly I really love terraria's backgrounds and I love the idea of the clouds moving by themelves towards the left .It just adds so much
Just realized I forgot to mention how awesome the video was !
Thank you! Never get played Terraria, actually.
parallax scrolling is such a weird thing to take note of but i always do and i ALWAYS love it, especially done well. it's one of my favorite visual aspect of hollow knight there is such an emphasis on parallax
Hey Dan. You have a nice voice, you're informative without solicitation, and the pictures are pretty (in the video). I'll probably end up rewatching your videos at most 5 times. Thanks for the channel :)
Thank you!
Parallax is great
My favourite examples are manipulations of the sprites themselves to achieve a 3d feel, the vid showed a few examples actually. By establishing interrupts as a layer moves, one can have certain parts of the vertical space scroll faster/slower horizontally. Notice how older games with just the one layer had more depth in the back, how none of the sprites overlap? It's not something ya think about but fuck is it clever! Fighting games and a lot of platformers at the time also loved morphing the ground, classic examples being most of the floors in SF2 and Toy Story (look up Gamehut if ya haven't already!)
I've known about parallax scrolling for a bit now but I had no idea it is used in top-down games. That's a pretty clever use of it too. I'm definitely gonna check out some more examples of that. I think that area might be a bit untapped currently.
Sounds good! Could definitely be used more in top down stuff.
The background music is a bop
Awesome job!
The parallax effect of the river in "kingdom two crowns" is just magic for me. It seems to be outside the screen, like 3d glasses.
That sounds awesome, I'll check it out!
Ooohhh I saved this to my watch list on EShop recently! Thanks for reminding me!
Your videos are always so calm and relaxing to listen to.
Thank you!
@@VideoGameAnimationStudy of course! I'm also really interested in learning more about animation because of you. You've made it interesting for me lol. Especially with Super Metroid.
That's so great to hear!!
The Jim Power one will make sense to you, as in why they did it this particular way, if you simply hold a pair of normal sunglasses in front of your eyes at an angle so only one eye is actually covered by the tinted lens, and then watch during any moments where the screen is moving and parallax scrolling is in effect....
That's right yeah, so I've heard.
I remember as a kid really understanding what parallax is in the dkc2 level, Lockjaw's Locker. It has horizontal parallax, and vertical parallax (by way of the fx chip.) Since it was an underwater level, you could really watch and understand how the relative speed of each part of the image responded to where you moved the camera.
Oh that's cool, I'll have to check it out!
I was looking for a comment like this. Donkey Kong Country 2 blows my mind with some of its background effects. I can’t say the artstyle they used in the series is my absolute favourite on the super nes, but neither can I deny that the people at Rare really pushed the hardware to some jaw dropping results.
I've always been impressed by that parallax scrolling in the NES game Metal Storm.
One example of weird parallax scrolling for me was in Castlevania: Bloodlines; the first section of the Versailles Palace level (5) has some foreground scrolling that is "cut off" when you get to the fountain. It's hard to explain, but it just looks wrong.
There was a Super Mario World rom hack call Call of Cthulhu in which there is a level that litterally uses the platforms that are scolling on the paralax as walkable platforms. It becomes sort of a puzzle level where you have to take into account how slow or fast the platforms scroll in order to make the jumps and not fall off. It makes for a really cool dynamic between the player and the level, like the level itself is against you and trying to make you slip up.
Those side-by-side comparisons of the Sonic videos were incredibly helpful at illustrating your point. Wonderful video!
Hey thanks so much! I'm glad they did, I had fun making them!
You did well explaining parallax and showing how it works, the Sonic 1 example was some great editing.
Some examples of parallax that stood out to me:
Axelay has a unique way of implementing parallax, it creates a pseudo 3D kind of depth.
Panorama cotton; the whole game looks like snes mode 7 but it's all 2D layers that create an illusion of depth, stage 3 has the most detail.
Water surfaces in Sonic 3 Hydrocity and DKC2 have an above and below parallax view, it works well I haven't seen it in many other games.
*
Oooh thanks for those, I'll check them out!
Thanks for the response!
Never mind on that last one, I haven't played that game in a long time I thought I remembered parallax but it's not, I misremembered.
Macross on snes is a better example, also mickey mania on genesis/megadrive
Batman return of the joker on nes had a lot of parallax backgrounds,
If your Dan and your an Animator does that make you a
DANIMATOR
And I produce Danimation
I remember Rayman origins had wonderful fore-ground and back-ground parallax that made everything that much more beautiful. ah man I haven't played that game in years
I ADORE parallax scrolling in 2-D games. I think Moon Patrol was an early example.
It's quite simple but i was amazed as a kid at Mortal Kombat's use if parallax to create depth in the floors. Also hydrocity act1 (not act 2) in Sonic 3 used parallax to extend the surface of the water far into the background
Great episode! Glad you included examples where it does not work so well
achieving layer scrolling on hardware that didn't easily support it(the 8bit consoles) probably took more development time and cost (extra cartridge hardware + programming time) than was necessary in the hope it paid off which in some cases it probably did't if the gameplay just was't there.
3d games are a bit of a catch area as traditionally past a certain point objects become a billboard (least wastage of processing power on things that normally aren't noticed are no longer 3d) or early 3d's infamous 'fog', but outside that there is no parallel movement as everything is naturally drawn (unless its 3d floating on 2d background)
Fantastic Video. Not only did I learn something new about what I already loved, but the entire presentation was flawlessly done and creative to the point where I don't know how you did what you did.
Thank you so much, I'm glad you enjoyed it!
If you want an example of one gone weird (but not Jim power bad), Phantasy Star III comes to mind. The top and bottom half of the battle scenes scroll in opposite directions (it makes me feel dizzy). This was removed from the English release making it a Japanese exclusive feature (this isn't like Sonic 1 where the English release was an earlier build missing the cloud layer) although a romhack that restores this effect does exist.
Interesting; thanks!
Jurassic Park rampage edition has some beautiful parallax in the Savannah level
This is SOO well produced. Can't get enough of this :D
Hey, thanks ever so much! I'm glad you enjoy it 😁
What an absolutely delightful channel.
What a delightfully wonderful comment!
I always loved Mount Ordeals in Final Fantasy IV. I remember seeing it in 1998 (well into the age of the PSX and N64) and just being amazed by it despite it being primitive and 16 bits.
Thank you RUclips channel for recommending me this video. I subscribed 3. minutes in. Keep up the good work brother 🙏
One of your best ones so far.
Keep it up👍
Thanks!
I would have liked if you had talked about the difference between "sandwich" parallax like green hill zone and true multiple layer parallax like in most modern games including the alien hominid shots you showed. For those wondering, if you look at the sonic example again you'll see that the background is actually a single image with horizontal pixel layers scrolling horizontally at different rates but with no vertical movement at all. Slices never obscure the layer "behind" them.
Ahhh yes, that's interesting. I forgot Green Hill didn't have much vertical scrolling.
Sandwich, I'm using this term in place of perline scrolling now
Very nice compilation of parallax effects !
The parallax in Overdrive Ostrich boss arena in Megaman X2
Yeahhh that's s pretty good one!
There are some lovely parallax effects in the PS1 version of the original Rayman. It varies from level to level, but there are up to four layers of background, plus the layer the gameplay is happening in, and another layer that occasionally crops up in the foreground. They all scroll independently, and the differences in speed sometimes suggest that the layers are extremely far apart, which really creates a sense that we're exploring a vast world even when the levels themselves are relatively small and simple.
Ah man, it's been so long since I've played that game, really should give it another whirl.
I love how the death egg zone has no paralax.
The contrast with the rest of the game really makes it stand out as a daunting imposing place. Probably wouldn't work as well if it weren't for how the rest of the game handles parallax so well.
Yeah I think you may be right actually.
Minish Cap has a good example of the background scrolling the wrong way whenever there's a pit to a room below. It makes it feel like the camera is panning left but scrolling right at the same time. It's really weird once you know it's there.
Oh I forgot about Minish Cap, I'll have to play through it again!
I loved the parallax scrolling in DKC: Tropical Freeze.
Glad you are making such an incredible work, dude. I contacted you like... 6 months ago? I told you I wanted to create a channel about game design and you encouraged me to follow that path. Guess what? I am pretty near to complete the first video. It probably has lots of mistakes and errors, but I hope I will do something better in the forecoming videos.
Thanks a lot dude, your channel is gorgeous. Pride to be one of your first Patreon backers!
Hey, thanks so much for the kind words and support!
Ah that's great! I can't wait to see it! I'm glad I was encouraging you!
I'm so glad you made another video!
Another channel worth translating and subtitling. Thanks.
Thanks. I subtitle where I can, and some people have translated into Spanish.
Dan Root: Video Game Animation Study: I'd be willing to translate it for Portuguese, since brazilian folks seems to be interested on the subject lately.
Oh cool! I think I have *community contributions* switched on, feel free to add subtitles of you like, that's be very much appreciated!
Let me know if you can't access it.
Goodness every one of your videos just makes me feel so happy and comfy! Your voice and editing plus the great knowledge does wonders. Loveyoubye!
Hey thank you so much! 😊
Congrats on 50k
Thank you! I might do a Q&A on my community tab for funsies
Yet another Sonic example, but I always liked how they used vertical parallax in Hydrocity Zone so the water's surface appeared to stretch to the horizon in the proper perspective, whether you were above or below the surface.
Same with Launch Base Zone
Yeah, the water level in Sonic 3 always astonished me!
I knew there was something strange about the bushes in Aquatic Ruin. I could never put my finger on it.
It's weird that you still have not talked about the animation in fighting games
Other people have talked about it
I have, but I'm redoing the video slightly. It's in the focus playlist I think.
I first noticed parallax scrolling in the Master System game Choplifter I believe. I thought wow that's cool, I've never seen my NES do that. Then I really noticed it in Sonic CD when I got it, particularly the Stardust Speedway bad future stage. I don't remember how many layers of scrolling red clouds there were, but I remember it seeming like a lot and I was pretty impressed by that.
Sonic CD had some way cool parallax, and some odd parallax too haha
I LOVED this. As a game artist myself, it would've been awesome to have a video like this a couple of years ago, to easily explain to everyone in the team the importance of having parallax in our games. We are now making Sky Racket, a Shoot 'em up/Block Breaker game filled with parallax hahahah
There's one other impressive foreground parallax not shown here, from Sega and Disney's World of Illusion Starring Mickey & Donald. Such beautiful, detailed and rich foreground art!
Hey I'm glad you enjoyed it! Oh that sounds cool, nice that it has parallax now!
Yeah I know the one you mean, that is a good example!
Great video and Sonic has to be said... The Sonic retro games are legendary 🤩👍
Your videos are some of my favorite, thank you for them !
One of my favorite and most wildly creative games for the Megadrive/Genesis was Dynamite Headdy, which uses parallax in such crazy ways
My favourite application of parallax (and line scrolling on the Genesis VDP) is Ranger-X. That game looks so good and has a lot of neat effects and tricks.
Not sure how common that actually is (heard diverging opinions on this) but at least when it comes to Shovel Knight they made that game in a 3D engine, partly because getting a nice and proper looking parallax effect is easier when you can just put background elements at a desired position and change the size of it as you see fit (as opposed to fiddling with background image settings).
The game is shown in an orthographic view, so it still looks completely 2D even though there are several layers at work. So yeah, from a purely technical standpoint you could call Shovel Knight a 3D game.
Oh yeah, that was in Boundary Break recently wasn't it! I should've bright that route of parallax up, it didn't occur to me.
It's definitely a nice way of going about getting parallax just right!
Some of the worst examples of misunderstood parallax come from 2.5D racing games. F-Zero, Mario Kart, Sonic CD special stages, etc. The developers apply parallax scrolling to the background layers when the camera rotates. It's a particularly funny concept when you think about applying it to real life: "That mountain is blocking the sunset." "Don't worry, just rotate and it won't be anymore."
Yeah it's kinda funny how they had to get across that you were turning in a direction with the limited hardware capabilities they had.
@@VideoGameAnimationStudy It would be perfectly realistic if they'd just skipped the parallax. That doesn't happen when you turn in real life. Only when you move sideways. I think the only reason for doing it was just to show off the hardware capabilities.