Opinions: What was the best-looking shmup for PCE/TG16?

[komatik]

The PC-Engine/TurboGrafx/SuperGrafx/etc platform probably had the largest shmup library to pick from of any console. What are people's opinions on which game had the best graphics?

(For fairness sake, you should specify what addons were in the mix. Obviously ArcadeCard+CD titles like Sapphire are in a different category than an og hucard game).

[gray117]

Don't think they'll be too much difference except in honourables

CD (Arcade): Sapphire
Hu: Soldier Blade

Honourables:
Gates of Thunder - CD (Super) - Just get along with this personally
Mr Heli - (HU) - Something different
R-type (Any) - Fantastic showing for this machine

[Despatche]

Aldynes. It's a SuperGrafx game.

[Xyga]

Some of them here: http://www.racketboy.com/retro/tg16-pc- ... hics-sound

Though honestly there are too many beautiful games on the pcengine family of systems if you look only at the graphics, to be objective would require to take animation and design into account.
And yeah why not sound, after all a game can look good but sound ugly to the point it partly spoils the quality.

[Sumez]

Soldier Blade, man

[SuperDeadite]

Aesthetic wise, I adore Sylphia.

Rayxanber III really does a fantastic job of creating an alien world that you dive deeper into every stage.

Forgotten Worlds makes the MD port look like an 8-bit game.

Metamor Jupiter has some fantastic sprite effects.

Image Fight II is Irem sprite work at it's best.

Nexzr is a must see as well.

[OmegaFlareX]

HuCard: Air Zonk
regular CD: Spriggan
Super CD: Gradius 2

Sapphire is in a league of its own, no other shmup on the system can come close.

[garrz32]

Air Zonk for me , just gorgeous

[opt2not]

Rayxanber III

[lkermel]

My personal HuCard favorite is Soldier Blade - this is the game I always go back to most of the time. And it looks (and sounds) amazing for a HuCard game.

As for CDs, Sapphire looks gorgeous for sure but it's not really a game I often revisit. So it is the best looking PCE CD shooter but, to me, games like Gradius II, Spriggan or Nexzr look great and have more replay values imho. Winds of Thunder also looks and plays great. Man, too many good ones! Another one that looks cool is Image Fight 2 but the difficulty level is out of this world, so you don't really get to see a lot of it

[komatik]

Some of them here: http://www.racketboy.com/retro/tg16-pc- ... hics-sound

I love how they mention Magical Chase as an example, but the screenshot is the original Japanese version instead of the US version with the upgraded graphics.

[Xyga]

There aren't so many people to remember about that, the US library is often overlooked, and racketboy isn't nerdy enough a website to go much into 'details' like regional differences.

On that topic, it's a part of the deep retro-nerd knowledge that's lost little by little, scattered across the interrnet often in early 90's/2000's websites disappearing the one after the other.

Regional and ports differences, all games all platforms, there's enough material for a massive dedicated database, website and community the world needs.

[GSK]

I wouldn't call it a favourite but Air Zonk's probably the flashiest-looking card game.

[Coryoon]

Coryoon.

[Special World]

Not to derail, but is there any good compilations to experience TG-16 shooters on? The Wii virtual console had a very nice selection, but that's offline now. Playing Gate of Thunder and Star Parodier got me back into shmups in a big way back when.

[OmegaFlareX]

There are upcoming plug-n-play Turbo and PCE (J) minis which are likely to have some of the well-regarded ones. Until then it's probably down to getting a full romset (google "no intro pc engine" and "redump pc engine") and firing those up in the emulator of your choice (I recommend RetroArch) or real hardware (Super SD System 3).

[komatik]

You don't need a full romset if all you're looking for is shmups (and honestly searching for 'no intro' stuff in 2019 is unnecessary and passe). I dunno if I'm allowed to post a direct link here, but google "Project Peacock". It's a ~32GB torrent of every hucard and CD based shmup ever made for the entire PCE/TG family. (Worth mentioning that the card games only account for ~60MB of that ~32GB). I've never found an easy list (in English) showing the top selling games though, so you'll just have to ask around for opinions on what games to start with.

I would recommend RetroArch as well, although its menu system is trash so it's a pain to set up right the first time if you've never used it before. (If you're on a Mac you might be better off with OpenEmu which uses most of the same cores).

[PC Engine Fan X!]

I'd have to say that the Hu-Card STG of Soldier Blade is a highlight worth revisiting -- it did get a proper TTI release stateside back in 1992.

With the real hardware based PC Engine or TurboGrafx-16 consoles, by using a Turbo Everdrive flash cart setup or SSD3 setup, plenty of PCE STGs are at your disposal (compared to playing 'em via emulation). Toys-R-Us stores in the USA had gotten their allotted shipment of brand new TTI distributed Magical Chase & Legend of Hero Tonma back in February of 1994 at mere $19.99 MSRP each -- there was no mention that they were both the very last TTI Hu-Cards to be released stateside. As it stands, the TTI (Turbo Technologies Incorporated) version of MC remains one of the holy grails of completing one's entire TG-16 Hu-Card collection that fetches a pretty penny these days indeed. It's a given that TZD (Turbo Zone Direct that sold both TG-16, Turbo Duo hardware and software) based out of Southern California back in 1994-1996 sold brand new copies of TTI's MC for $39.99 USD back in the day if you really wanted one back in the day.

Sometime back, I asked here on the Shmups.org forum if the PCE was capable of playing rendered sprites and the answer was a resounding "yes, it can". So therefore a Hu-Card based PCE STG in the vein of Pulstar/Blazing Star or a tate one is possible without resorting to the need for an Arcade Card Duo or Arcade Card Pro in going the Arcade CD-Rom2 platform route.

Considering that Konami owns the back catalog of Hudson Soft's software IPs including the various PCE game IPs, it'd be cool if they could make a brand new PCE STG with rendered sprites infused with solid gameplay and mechanics -- that'd be awesome for nostalgia's sake. Konami's mini Force Gear STG on the PCE Super CD-Rom2 platform is worth revisiting as well. Tis a shame that Force Gear was never developed into a full-blown Super CD-Rom2 PCE STG title, it would've done quite well with the PCE STG audience indeed.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[OmegaFlareX]

You don't need a full romset if all you're looking for is shmups (and honestly searching for 'no intro' stuff in 2019 is unnecessary and passe). I dunno if I'm allowed to post a direct link here, but google "Project Peacock".

Disagree on all counts. There are plenty of good non-shmups on PCE that are worth checking out. I have no idea what is "unnecessary and passe in 2019" about No Intro (seriously, what an absurd statement), it is the current go-to standard for retro romsets. You're not allowed to post rom links here, but giving google tips is ok as far as I know.

I would recommend RetroArch as well, although its menu system is trash so it's a pain to set up right the first time if you've never used it before. (If you're on a Mac you might be better off with OpenEmu which uses most of the same cores).

I agree with this though. RA's UI is a total dumpster fire. The latency options are good enough to make me tolerate the UI myself and recommend it to others.

[komatik]

There are plenty of good non-shmups on PCE that are worth checking out

While that's true, Special World specifically asked about shooters, not every good game. The entire PCE+TG library is something like 60GB if not more. Suggesting someone download all that is silly when he/she only asked for just a subset of a single genre. Honestly downloading the entirety of "Project Peacock" when you only want a dozen games is also kinda silly, but the best I could suggest.

I have no idea what is "unnecessary and passe in 2019" about No Intro (seriously, what an absurd statement),

Intros, and having to specify "no intro" was a thing back ages and ages ago that's long since died out. Unless you're messing with ancient torrents from the dawn of time you don't need to deal with that (or bother with no-intro.org) anymore because 'no intro' roms have been the default for years. Freaking nobody has any 'with intro' shit anymore. Even if you were able to find some I'm not sure if any emulators released in the past 5-10 years can even still load that old stuff. All you have to do is search for "[platform] torrent" or something and basically anything that successfully downloads will run.

Honestly, a lot of people are trying to kill the term completely because it's starting to cause a lot of confusion. As the years go on, newer generations enter who weren't around back in the day of intros and don't understand that 'no intro' refers to a clean rom image that hasn't been fucked with. They assume that 'no intro' means the rom image WAS fucked with and that it had its intro animation removed and try to seek out 'with intro' sets and get confused when they can't find them. You see threads about this from noobs a lot, and as the old timers who can explain it fade away, the gap is filled by other not-quite-noobs who don't understand what's going on and provide 'explanations' that only make the confusion worse.

[OmegaFlareX]

The entire PCE+TG library is something like 60GB if not more. Suggesting someone download all that is silly when he/she only asked for just a subset of a single genre.

60GB isn't that much these days, in regards to both storage and connectivity. That's nothing for me. Even if you have shitty internet, that's something you'd leave running while at work or overnight and it'd be done when you get back to it. Modern console games, of all things, tend to have huge patches like that I've heard. Unless you live in a cabin in the woods, it's not a huge deal anymore.

FWIW, the full HuCard set is 88MB (interesting to know that 60 of that is all shmups, ha), and I've always found it easier to find a full romset than a full <insert genre here> romset. I wasn't even thinking about the CD library, honestly. Project Peacock sounds like a good idea because outside of shmups and a handful of platformers and like two RPGs, there aren't many CD games accessible to non-Japanese-speaking people.

I don't do torrents anymore but you can still find romsets if you google them, and I'll bet half the results will still be GoodPCE. That's why I recommend No Intro specifically.

[komatik]

60GB isn't that much these days, in regards to both storage and connectivity.

For your average upper-middle class desktop using US gamer probably, but there are a lot of people out there with 256gb SSD laptops or doing the RetroPie thing. Many people have to deal with data caps on their home internet too. 60gb is not gargantuan but it's certainly not a trivial amount of space either. Not yet anyway.

(interesting to know that 60 of that is all shmups, ha)

To be fair there are a few dupes and it includes games with "shooter elements" (their own words). A quick glance indicates that if I do some basic filtering and don't count both US and JP releases of the same game as separate entities, the real total is probably more like 40mb. Assuming the 88 is correct that still implies a good half of the total library is shmups though.

[MJR]

Sometime back, I asked here on the Shmups.org forum if the PCE was capable of playing rendered sprites and the answer was a resounding "yes, it can". So therefore a Hu-Card based PCE STG in the vein of Pulstar/Blazing Star or a tate one is possible without resorting to the need for an Arcade Card Duo or Arcade Card Pro in going the Arcade CD-Rom2 platform route.

Considering that Konami owns the back catalog of Hudson Soft's software IPs including the various PCE game IPs, it'd be cool if they could make a brand new PCE STG with rendered sprites infused with solid gameplay and mechanics -- that'd be awesome for nostalgia's sake. Konami's mini Force Gear STG on the PCE Super CD-Rom2 platform is worth revisiting as well. Tis a shame that Force Gear was never developed into a full-blown Super CD-Rom2 PCE STG title, it would've done quite well with the PCE STG audience indeed.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

I hate correcting you, since you are my very favourite poster here, but please allow me to do that just a little bit, as someone who has been involved with making graphics for games since 1994.

Ability of playing rendered graphics has almost next to nothing to do with the console itself or its processing power, or whether you need arcade card or cd-rom. You see, prerendered sprite and hand-drawn sprite is technically a same thing, it's just a bunch of pixels, a result of rendering process done separately on graphical workstation (which, at the time, could have been Real 3D on Amiga (which is how Super Stardust prerenders were created) or Silicon Graphics workstation (which was powerful for it's time, I used to work on one during my days at Probe Entertainment back in 1996) using lighwave or Nichimen (which is what all the japanese developers used).

Now whether it is a good idea to remake old shmup to old console with prerendered polygon graphics depends on a number of factors. Back in the early 90's, the antialiasing and downscaling algorithms for pixel graphics were really very bad, and lot of the mess had to be corrected by hand(!!) before the result was acceptable for a limited palette and resolution, but now they have progressed to a point of being quite acceptable, so you could probably end up having pretty good looking spaceship models even for limited resolutions and palettes (though for PC-Engine you might need to create a custom filter for Photoshop or such). However, to really benefit from rendering sprites, you will absolutely need smooth animation, which in turn requires lots of frames = lots of memory. Which, in turn takes us back to the starting point: You would need arcade card or arcade card pro if you really wanted to benefit from prerendered graphics.
For vanilla PC-engine, or Turbografx, I would still personally recommend hand-drawn sprites, as gifted artist/animator could utilize memory+palette+resolution limits much more efficiently, even against today's compression algorithms and rendering packages.
But for a PC-Engine with enough memory, be it card or cd-rom, or both, it would be quite interesting idea that could probably work.

[gray117]

First I've got the suspicious feeling that the question and answer around what constitutes 'rendered sprites' may have been horribly constituted and confused - this could literally be all manner of things - not necessarily a pre-rendered bitmap asset which we're referring to here. But I rather suspect the original answer was a slightly cheeky 'yes' in regards to all kinds of rasterised assets. Anyhow in this you're are correct - no matter the provenence - a bitmap, is a bitmap, is a bitmap.

Back in the early 90's, the antialiasing and downscaling algorithms for pixel graphics were really very bad, and lot of the mess had to be corrected by hand(!!) before the result was acceptable for a limited palette and resolution, but now they have progressed to a point of being quite acceptable...
...compression algorithms and rendering packages.

Not really.

Your main issue is i)resolution size ii)palette range iii) alpha (if possible) having to be 1 bit ... which relates to sampling/rendering technique available if asset was scaled/rotated.

There's only so much you can do at with a small bitmap, and here choice becomes way more important than accuracy, especially when we're considering 1 bit silhouettes.

Palette range either restricted at a system level, or at least via however you were coding the game (it's all very well being able to technically choose from anything between a 2 bit (512) to 8bit (16.5m colours) range [this is per channel - I don't think anything until neo geo went up to 5 + 1alpha?], but if you can only show 64 colours on screen at a time - then that's very conceivably only 8-16 colours (from an already likely restricted range) for a given 16-32 pixel sprite that might have to palette swap/share with another, it really doesn't matter how good your downsample is at that stage.

Typically you couldn't afford a blend that would allow for more that a one bit alpha, you may find technical demos of what may look like alias'ed assets, but they wouldn't be practical for games. The same can be taken for sampling a rotatation/scale - the system just had to pick from the available colours, it could not afford to interpolate an average, much less multi-sample to work out the best weighted average to take.

This stuff was around for authoring 2d though.... realtime practical couldn't see any benefit from it until later though; with better hardware.

Compression algorithms are a non starter for anything game based - these systems were too slow/unoptimised to really deal with any of the typical compression methods in a beneficial/practical manner. (Yes you could share/reduce memory sizes by block chopping/sharing/processing, but that's not really the same as the compression/memory management we use now for dds/png/jpg/mpeg etc. - although we still love that 4x4 block ).

Rendering packages? It's not about them being great now - it's just that there weren't even really practical desktop/software combinations until about 91 for this work, let alone people available to use it for game dev. Of course that all changed at a blistering pace, but still too late for pce to ever really see anything from it: Everyone always sees snes donkey kong as an old system trying to hang on. But really it was basically the first time there was an affordable and (semi)experienced staff base to work on something like this for a year (or so?more?) before shipping it in 94.

[MJR]

Not really.

Your main issue is i)resolution size ii)palette range iii) alpha (if possible) having to be 1 bit ... which relates to sampling/rendering technique available if asset was scaled/rotated.

There's only so much you can do at with a small bitmap, and here choice becomes way more important than accuracy, especially when we're considering 1 bit silhouettes.

Palette range either restricted at a system level, or at least via however you were coding the game (it's all very well being able to technically choose from anything between a 2 bit (512) to 8bit (16.5m colours) range [this is per channel - I don't think anything until neo geo went up to 5 + 1alpha?], but if you can only show 64 colours on screen at a time - then that's very conceivably only 8-16 colours (from an already likely restricted range) for a given 16-32 pixel sprite that might have to palette swap/share with another, it really doesn't matter how good your downsample is at that stage.

Typically you couldn't afford a blend that would allow for more that a one bit alpha, you may find technical demos of what may look like alias'ed assets, but they wouldn't be practical for games. The same can be taken for sampling a rotatation/scale - the system just had to pick from the available colours, it could not afford to interpolate an average, much less multi-sample to work out the best weighted average to take.

This stuff was around for authoring 2d though.... realtime practical couldn't see any benefit from it until later though; with better hardware.

Compression algorithms are a non starter for anything game based - these systems were too slow/unoptimised to really deal with any of the typical compression methods in a beneficial/practical manner. (Yes you could share/reduce memory sizes by block chopping/sharing/processing, but that's not really the same as the compression/memory management we use now for dds/png/jpg/mpeg etc. - although we still love that 4x4 block ).

Rendering packages? It's not about them being great now - it's just that there weren't even really practical desktop/software combinations until about 91 for this work, let alone people available to use it for game dev. Of course that all changed at a blistering pace, but still too late for pce to ever really see anything from it: Everyone always sees snes donkey kong as an old system trying to hang on. But really it was basically the first time there was an affordable and (semi)experienced staff base to work on something like this for a year (or so?more?) before shipping it in 94.

Are you correcting me on something? Or what you mean by saying "not really"? Not really what? I am sorry but I think I lost track somewhere, because when I reread your post I don't think I disagree with you on anything there

I am talking, in very laymans terms, about what the results I got when I downscaled something in photoshop back in 1994 vs when I downscale something in photoshop now, when I have several different downscaling options to choose from. Before 1994, when photoshop didnt exist, you usually scaled with dpaint for horrible results, and then pretty much redrew it by hand (unless you could afford zillion frames for ultra-smooth scaling/rotation) My point was that back in the day, if you wanted good looking lo-res bitmap, you HAD to do the antialiasing by hand, and you HAD to also pick up the palette by hand. Typically, for something like Stardust on amiga, the workflow went like this: render-> export bitmap to Dpaint > remap palette for 8-16 colors (we NEVER used 32 colors for sprites, not for Stardust, not for Elfmania), then antialias every frame by hand. This was very time-consuming, real shit-job for the artist.

But lets presume you meant that it did not matter how good the resizing algorithms were. For amiga, that was pretty much true. For example, you could not do for sprites what you can do now, which is create them in maximum size and then just resize them in photoshop for whatever size you need.

But when I prerendered models as late as 2006, by that time, photoshop was so good with scaling, that I could render a sprite for 256x256 size, and then rescale it on pretty much every size and palette setup I ever wanted, and I never had to fix them by hand anymore. And this is just talking about PC environment.

Bloodhouse was actually given chance to work on Neo Geo back in 1993-1994, though not on PC Engine, they got the invitation from SNK after they sent their demo tape showing their renderings (as why that didn't happen was a sad and hilarious story - it was because none of the Bloodhouse staff -who would have been able to travel to japan- felt secure enough about their english skills!). As to answer your question; yes there were some people from the demo scene who could have been able to make something for PC-Engine. But this is obviously all hypothetical.

Is there anything we disagree on here?

[gray117]

Not really


Sorry couldn't resist.

Only correcting the emphasis that your original post seemed to place on relating the issue of producing these kind of assets to the effectiveness of the software - the fact that the tools were comparatively poor (2d), or didn't really exist (3d), the limitations of something like the pce inevitably made the task a hand done thing that wouldn't have greatly benefited from the better tools we have now (aside from not having the time to make and eat lunch while you're comp booted...). It's rare we get into an art topic on here, surely shmups board can cater to a bit of non-layman specificity?

So aside from the dirth of rendering options today to first produced pre-rendered art, you'd still be going over this all by hand today for if producing assets for such a system as pce.

This is because you'd not have the end format options you were presumably targeting in say 2006 - the worst of it probably being our chum dxt1 444 lossy, but more likely 8881/8888 lossy - under those kinds of deliverables - sure you can leave a lot to the software.... but if you were, say, doing DS 256 palettes or (larger 256x192 gasps ) 12bit 444, you'd still be going over that by hand as late as... what ... 2008/9?

+ anything, even these days, if it goes down to 8881 - you're still pretty much always going to do a bit of a tidy on that alpha - at least at the smaller sizes?

[MJR]

Not really


+ anything, even these days, if it goes down to 8881 - you're still pretty much always going to do a bit of a tidy on that alpha - at least at the smaller sizes?

True, alpha channels almost always need some cleaning by hand. How much handwork a retro gaming device would need for rendered assets (or any assets) is something I don't really know - for Commodore 64 it's a cakewalk since it's so limited that you can't really make anything on a photoshop or rendering program for it, but for PCE or Neo Geo.. I like to entertain a thought that it would be possible to create some filter or plugin for photoshop that would create a matching colorspace/limited palette, and then convert assets for such - but I really dont know. I am sure I could find out if I googled, after all there are lot of enthusiastic homebrew retro developers there - I am not really such. I was simply reminiscing the old days because I like to do it