Keep your 256 onscreen colors !!!

[railslave]

Sega only needed 64 to pull this off












(Sorry i was playing ristar and i had to get that off my chest....20 years late )

[D]

Win!

[stryc9]

Yes they did some pretty amazing stuff within the colour limitations. All the Sonics, the Treasure games, showcase amazing use of colour and shading IMO.

However, that's not to say that some software didn't suffer as there are plenty of games that over-use dithering which is much more apparent through scart, obviously.

FF CD is a good example of that. As in, the graphics are really close to the arcade, but the colour gradation is not great, giving the port a grainy appraisal.

On a related topic, I always preferred the higher resolution of the MD to what we got with the SF.

[railslave]

I dont mind a bit of graininess, there's an un-reproducible genius to it sometimes. ( i hope google chrome can spell!!, i cant)

The pixel art forums are full of "the science of dithering" now

[Specineff]

Stryc9, have you been hanging around PC Engine Fan X, by any chance?

[Obiwanshinobi]

MD games where colours really did it for me (with RGB, SCART and such) would be Monster World IV and Contra: Hard Corps. I mean, artistically rather than tech demo way.

[louisg]

The Amiga had 32 colors and a lot of those visuals smoke the Genesis

http://francksauer.com/index.php/games/ ... s/10-agony ... daaaaaaaaaaamn (scroll down for the making-of)

[railslave]

The Amiga had 32 colors and a lot of those visuals smoke the Genesis

http://francksauer.com/index.php/games/ ... s/10-agony ... daaaaaaaaaaamn (scroll down for the making-of)

Hmmm im a massive fan of the Amiga, Psygnosis, bitmapbrothers ect , but i just cant imagine Sonic or anything like that on the machine (though in there own right , yeah , it wipes the floor with segas machine).Yet there are some incredible Amiga conversions on the Megadrive, Gods, legend of galahad (leander)ect.

Seems to be be something to do with the amount on the screen as well, the speed.

i dunno, im not a techy.

You sure they only had 64 colors onscreen ? that doesnt sound right when you see the sky in turrican 2, fire and ice.

[null1024]

I still wish the Genesis system palette had more than 512 colors. Forces things to have a lot more contrast. It can be a nice look, but it generally is a handicap. It's not so much the number of onscreen colors, it's what colors can be on screen, period.

And yeah, Ristar is fucking gorgeous. Easily the best looking Genesis game.

[Ed Oscuro]

Considering how poor the early RGB encoders are, I'm not sure that would've been such a good idea. Composite video too! If nothing else, I love it for doing things very differently from the SNES.

[MOSQUITO FIGHTER]

I dunno. Think I'll be keeping mine.

[railslave]

its on !!


oh were playing the impossibly gorgeous square rpg card now ? ( ahhh...)

Lets see what we can do with 64 colors , and some clever design









And the knock out punch !!







considering the limitations
(not using the obvious gamechangers streets of rage 2, sonic,ecco 2,early disney platform exclusives ect)

...i Guess its down to the particular artist and their skill with color..

[Leandro]

And the knock out punch !!

Flink is beautiful and also a really good game, I think is the only psygnosis game I like


and the snes resolution bothers me more than the md's low color

[railslave]

I was hoping i wouldnt have to roll this badboy out

[MOSQUITO FIGHTER]

Go! Kirby Go!

[shmuppyLove]

Here's the champion on SNES, IMO



They really threw everything they had into Yoshi's Island!

[Ed Oscuro]

tasty cattails!

[trap15]

Why and how does Yoshi have shoes

[BryanM]

Bah. Back in my day we had six colors to the scanline with 98.5% of the time, one of them being black. And that's the way we likes it.

I still wish the Genesis system palette had more than 512 colors.

It really does kind of work to its character in some ways. In how "metal" the system was designed to be.

Argh and don't even get me started on the NES palette. Bastards couldn't be assed to stick in a brown or red color, so every freaking thing is orange and dark redish. But there's about 20 values for the same shade of "black"!

Why and how does Yoshi have shoes

So he doesn't cut up his feet on shards of broken glass, dur.

[BIL]

I find the MD tends to look a lot better in motion than stills. Hard Corps looks like a bit of a dog next to Contra Spirits, but the latter (or for a contemporary example, Wild Guns) can't match the amount of parallax, explosions and debris it throws around without missing a beat.

[Obiwanshinobi]

Hard Corps in motion has a problem with character animations. Back then games still had a hard time animating characters of mature proportions, but it bothers me in a game two years younger than MD Chelnov.
For lack of a better word, Hard Corps and Monster World IV palettes look "warmer" than most MD games to me. As if they developed fire.

[BIL]

That's more an issue of the Nakazato-helmed games' artistic style than hardware difference, though. HC's sprites and animation are about even with Spirits and that's three years older, and Shin Contra's human animation was functional at best too. It's all about monsters n' mechs parading about before going boom in spectacular fashion.



I love this guy. Until Einhander's Ausf A Gestell he was the funkiest killing machine ever.

[louisg]

The Amiga had 32 colors and a lot of those visuals smoke the Genesis

http://francksauer.com/index.php/games/ ... s/10-agony ... daaaaaaaaaaamn (scroll down for the making-of)

Hmmm im a massive fan of the Amiga, Psygnosis, bitmapbrothers ect , but i just cant imagine Sonic or anything like that on the machine (though in there own right , yeah , it wipes the floor with segas machine).Yet there are some incredible Amiga conversions on the Megadrive, Gods, legend of galahad (leander)ect.

Seems to be be something to do with the amount on the screen as well, the speed.

i dunno, im not a techy.

You sure they only had 64 colors onscreen ? that doesnt sound right when you see the sky in turrican 2, fire and ice.

The Amiga had only 32 maximum. Both the Ami and Genesis have some odd palette limitations to deal with, too.

But, you can change the palette per line, same with most systems. I'm not sure why Gods on Genesis/SNES ditched the nice sky effect. I would've even preferred a flat color over what they did (just drawing more bricks in the background).

I think the Amiga tends to have some nice looking still art because the palette is greater. But the Genesis does tend to be a lot better in motion. And the Genesis tends to be a lot better than the SNES in motion, too, Compile games aside But, I've seen some later Amiga games that do look really great. As far as Sonic-on-Amiga goes, I think Kid Chaos is full framerate, but the design is really off-putting and it doesn't seem like a great game. But, it's good in tech terms.

[null1024]

Bah. Back in my day we had six colors to the scanline with 98.5% of the time, one of them being black. And that's the way we likes it.

I still wish the Genesis system palette had more than 512 colors.

I really does kind of work to its character in some ways. In how "metal" the system was designed to be.

Argh and don't even get me started on the NES palette. Bastards couldn't be assed to stick in a brown or red color, so every freaking thing is orange and dark redish. But there's about 20 values for the same shade of "black"!

It really does give the Genesis a bit of character. Look at Devil Crash MD. The palette made everything much more metal.

The NES palette makes me want to stab a bitch. Although, that orange-y color does look pretty brown on my TV.

[BIL]

Devil Crash MD - a game so fucking metal, it should've included a free tetanus shot.

[louisg]

The whole 'palette influencing art aesthetic' really brings the nerd out in me. I think it's a great subject. If I can veer the thread away from 16-bitters for a sec, check this stuff out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAUprwhQTZY

This is all tricks pulled out on a C64 to get away from color limits. There was also a great video of Spectrum art that I was trying to find. The Spectrum was a British 8-bitter that only had a few colors all based off basic combinations of RGB, and you could only have a couple colors for every 8x8 square on the screen. But some really awesome artists are able to draw pictures that are designed to conceal that limitation. Pretty cool!

And lately I've been reading up on CGA composite mode The CGA is easily the ugliest palette ever, with your choice of puke (white, pink, cyan) or shit (green, brown, red).. no joke. But if you hook it up to a NTSC TV, you can get all kinds of nice colors out of it by placing combinations of colors next to each other in a pattern. AFAIK, you don't get a dithering, you get the TV reinterpreting the signal as totally new colors. I think it might have to be in high res. But it's pretty interesting.

And for a total mindfuck, read about how the Apple II puts out color. It's a totally nutty hack. One thing that always interests me is how different video based off RGB looks from video based off an NTSC or PAL video signal. I'm not talking clarity, I'm talking about the drastically different palettes you get out of very simple hardware depending on what you go for.

Aaaaaaanyway.. thought you guys might dig this stuff

[null1024]

The C64 palette is really nice though. All of the individual colors were hand-picked choices [so, colors that the hardware designers liked] and their complement [to save chip space]. It's not exactly easy to work with, especially under game conditions, but the colors really flow together.

The Speccy palette is atrocious [especially under game conditions, you might as well make your game monochrome thanks to attribute clashing...], and seeing good Spectrum art is really amazing. Really aggressive use of color is needed.

[louisg]

The C64 palette is really nice though. All of the individual colors were hand-picked choices [so, colors that the hardware designers liked] and their complement [to save chip space]. It's not exactly easy to work with, especially under game conditions, but the colors really flow together.

The Speccy palette is atrocious [especially under game conditions, you might as well make your game monochrome thanks to attribute clashing...], and seeing good Spectrum art is really amazing. Really aggressive use of color is needed.

Yeah, the C64 palette is muted and many colors are multipurpose. And yep, good Spectrum art knocks my socks off. That thing is *not* easy to make look good.

[railslave]

The C64 palette is really nice though. All of the individual colors were hand-picked choices [so, colors that the hardware designers liked] and their complement [to save chip space]. It's not exactly easy to work with, especially under game conditions, but the colors really flow together.

The Speccy palette is atrocious [especially under game conditions, you might as well make your game monochrome thanks to attribute clashing...], and seeing good Spectrum art is really amazing. Really aggressive use of color is needed.

Yeah, the C64 palette is muted and many colors are multipurpose. And yep, good Spectrum art knocks my socks off. That thing is *not* easy to make look good.

Shuts up about the amstrad cpc 464 palette (those colors) oh no , i couldnt help it !! c64 looks watered down

My little dodgy, half finished, homage to the spectrums 7 colors http://www.kongregate.com/games/railsla ... red-chakra


The whole point of this thread was, "yeah you have more colors, we know!! , yeah its pretty , very pretty (oh, and those additional chips you sneaked into half your games, we forgive you !!)..."

but look what we had with less colors..(im so going to start some kind of a music thing as well)

[MOSQUITO FIGHTER]

I think both the Genesis and SNES had graphically impressive games released at the end of their lifespan. It's too bad that they didn't keep making games for the systems for a little bit longer. I think it would have been interesting to see what else they could have come up with.















Blast processing!

The real winner was the Neo Geo though.