What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

[Sumez]

The underwater tube always felt obvious to me. Like there's clearly a playable area out there that you need to get to somehow. Of course the attract mode demonstrates it as well, but who watches those nowadays?

The X-Ray is usually the last thing I get in the game when just playing semi-blind (after a many year break), casually going for a full run, I don't think I've ever gotten it before going to Maridia, or even close to it! But that's one of the brilliant parts of Super Metroid, there's really no one holding your hand telling you where to go, and getting anywhere always requires uncovering "secrets", so different people will usually discover entirely different paths through the game.
I really wish they'd make another Metroid game like that some time, but considering how much the mainstream media has been praising Dread, which basically removes exploration entirely, I doubt it's gonna happen.

My biggest issue with Super Metroid from a "going in blind" perspective is how obscure finding the gravity suit is! It's very likely that someone will pass by that area multiple times and never realise they missed something, and then start trying to navigate Maridia without it, which makes the game extremely uncomfortable to play! I've seen it happen multiple times.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

]My biggest issue with Super Metroid from a "going in blind" perspective is how obscure finding the gravity suit is!

The Wrecked Ship appears as a named area on the map (including the miniature preview map when loading a game if I remember) so it's clear it's a major area and thus likely has more than just Super Missile upgrades... I don't recall having any issues finding it after exploring the ship thoroughly. I get it though, it's a bit unusual in that it's a major upgrade that's not immediately after a boss, but rather requires you to beat the boss so the area can then be explored fully to find the item, so I can see how it might be missed.

This is one of the two parts that was a roadblock to little me. The other might not have stumped as many people, but to me it felt like an unofficial rule that elevator and save rooms were just there for the utility and wouldn't have secrets.

The path to Kraid I can't remember if it's on the automap or not you can access, but those three blocks along the wall screamed suspicious to me. :V I think there's like one missile or E-tank hiding in a save room in Super Metroid? Sneaky stuff, haha. I guess it's the game that teaches you to take nothing for granted and that there's exceptions even to what feels like established game rules.

[Steven]

Is Super Metroid the only game in the series where you can softlock yourself? I think it is, although you have to go somewhat out of your way to do it by avoiding picking up three Energy and/or Reserve Tanks or fail to get enough missiles while also not having the Charge Beam. I think it's also possible to get to Draygon without the Gravity Suit, which is kind of fun to think about. You're definitely not getting out of that one if you go down into the lower part of that room without the Gravity Suit unless you use glitches.

Edit: NOPE, you can totally softlock yourself in Zero Mission if you know how, but you'd have to intentionally go out of your way to specifically get stuck, which is an odd thing to do...

which absolutely means that I will try it

Dread, which basically removes exploration entirely

But it doesn't... you just have to ignore the game strongly trying to push you in certain directions. Once you do, and after you have the Morph Ball, you'll find it's almost as open as Zero Mission.

Nothing compares to the original Metroid, though, which is why that game is really cool, as it just doesn't care what you want to do and will let you do it as long as it doesn't involve going to Tourian without killing Kraid and Ridley, and even then I wouldn't be surprised if there is a way to get in there without killing both of them.

[BrianC]

Wasn't there a way to soft lock yourself in the original Metroid? I remember something about getting stuck in areas that weren't supposed to be accessed.

[SuperDeadite]

閃鋼のクラリアス "The Armor of Glittering Clarias"
This game's combat gives me a major boner.
Digital crack in it's finest form:
https://youtu.be/ubyVk_ZmGcs

[To Far Away Times]

I quite liked how guided the experience was in Metroid Dread. I never once got lost, but still felt I had the freedom to explore (baring a few exceptions).

The super bombing the glass tube section in Super Metroid is fucking awful, and we'd never put up with that in modern game.

[Lander]

Tales RPGs. Failed to finish Destiny PS2 again; combat good, everything else not so good, and four playthroughs is too big of an ask to unlock the really interesting stuff. Perhaps I'll take a third swing with a 100% NG+++ save in a few years, once the memories of endless walking have faded.

I also checked out Arise to see if the modern series had made any interesting new leaps after Berseria.

The bumph about reinvigorating Tales with new talent was a bit overblown, I think. Looks nice enough, and the cast is pleasingly devoid of That One Annoying Character, but the underlying design is still entrenched in the japanese MMO no-man's-land that started somewhere around Xillia.

It kind of takes me out of the experience when a climactic fortress assault is comprised of ally and enemy NPC models standing around in big empty maps, like a waxwork simulating a perpetual quiet moment in the implied battle. Rush to the throne room and topple the despot! Or do it tomorrow, after a night of libations at the inn. And perhaps visit the gift shop on the way

Surprisingly, combat is kind of meh. Some signs of satisfying combo, but a lot of annoying bits. Lots of slow-breaking super armor, clunky perpetual lock-on, characters awkwardly stepping past their targets mid-swing, and bosses that stand around to let you whack tiny chunks off their giant bar before cleaving your party in half with two swings. Kind of kills it when landmark fights go out of their way to sandbag the core systems

I dunno, seems like good story backed by serviceable gameplay was the series' sweet spot. Everything else has been wildly uneven.

[XoPachi]

Because I really just needed a big, classic style 3D action adventure game, I decided to retry Skyward Sword with it's HD remaster. 100% the game. This is probably the most mixed I've been on a game in a while.
I hated the Wii original in my late teens which was a first because up until that point, I had liked every single Zelda game I had played...except the DS games. Never going back to those.

A lot of SS's core design concerns are still there and some of it's more annoying moments are still sore spots, but the remaster is actually surprisingly doing a lot of heavy lifting that I think Nintendo poorly marketed. This is doing so much that I find the game, with the asterisk that I play the HD port, a lot of fun. The addition of camera controls, standard controls (which I'll get to), and an extreme reduction of handholding and talking makes the game much less suffocating. It's good design is able to shine through with more cohesion and much better pacing. The games lower points don't feel nearly as trite and tedious because I'm not being halted every step to be told the obvious.

I was never in the camp that the motion controls are just trash outright. I've come to realize that "hrdcre gaymer" 15 year old Pachi didn't detest motion controls as much as it was cool to say they're inherently bad. When I found to not enjoy SS the first time, the motion controls were a distant last in my list of complaints. The sword combat was intuitive and responsive and IR aiming was as natural as it's expected to be. It really only sucked for flying and swimming. But the former would be less of a problem if the SKY wasn't just *bad* in itself and the latter didn't come to play until the last 3 hours of the game. The new standard controls fix any issues I had with non combat motion controlled segments. But they put a gross delay on stick controlled sword swings as a crutch to prevent accidental inputs for the macro based spin attacks. Funnily enough, this is similar to the control issues of Smash Ultimate but that's for another thread. You get used to it, but it never feels the best.

The thing I did like the most back then was the dungeon design and while I think I might have oversold them in the past, they were still a lot of fun minus the bosses. It's surprising how dense these places are given that most are 1 floor with maps that would suggest they'd be over in 20 minutes. They take at least an hour with a stale memory or none at all. And Lanayru Mining Facility, probably the mechanical highlight of all Zelda dungeons, can take up to 2 hours. And believe me I am not complaining. The worst part about the dungeons are the bosses.
3D Zelda bosses have never been good fights save for a handful, but SS really is among the worst in that regard at least especially in terms of design. Moldarach is stale and generic using nothing learned in any part of the brilliant Lanayru region. Tentalus is almost spiteful in it's throwaway, flaccid design. Scaldera is a boring, ugly, clashing waste of potential. Ghirahim is an excellent character but not an appropriately fitting temple climax and he damn sure didn't need to be the boss of two dungeons AND be faced a third time in the overworld. Koloktos is an aesthetic peak of Zelda boss design but the fight is probably among the weakest in the game beyond it's spectacle.

One thing I did like a lot was how much foreshadowing the game does through the environments and gameplay. And this remake dialing back the nose pulling REALLY let's that smart level design breathe. There's so many points where you see something peculiar that Link can't interact with and no one will tell you about. But if you keep a mental note of it, that "Oh! I know what this is!" is so extremely satisfying hours later when a quest or the story recalls it. Being able to just understand things for yourself without something telling you what to do or without being halted every 10 seconds so you end up forgetting it is great. Especially as new areas and gimmicks unfold in the process.

There's a lot to talk about with this game so I'll just bullet point things I liked:

-This game is beautiful. There's so many moments where I just stop and look at things. There's a lot of wonderful color and good atmosphere.
-Groose is a wonderfully written character that goes beyond a meathead, Shonen bully trope.
-Lanayru is a crown jewel of Zelda world design.
-Demise is excellent. I love how he's evil but is capable of some respect and honor. Invites Link for a clean duel and is genuinely impressed by his courage even granting him high praise upon being slain.
-Link is not my favorite design here but I like the progression of anger and burning courage he gains as his mission progresses and his spirit is tempered.
-Oh my GOD Kina is cute as Hell.

I'm glad I came back to this despite it's ever present flaws. I definitely had more fun than the last two Zelda's.

[Lander]

Good old Groose. Meme power and funny theme tune aside, they broke the mold with that one.

I was never in the camp that the motion controls are just trash outright. I've come to realize that "hrdcre gaymer" 15 year old Pachi didn't detest motion controls as much as it was cool to say they're inherently bad. When I found to not enjoy SS the first time, the motion controls were a distant last in my list of complaints.

I never gave it much credence either, though Ninty did somewhat bring the waggle suck narrative on themselves by shipping the Wiimote without a gyro, then hyping it up with the implication that it would be accurate enough to go beyond a mushy virtual button.

Indeed, 15 year old Lander couldn't wait for the motion control equivalent of the Kingdom Hearts 2 parking lot battle even post-Motion+, I think Dragon Quest Swords ended up as the most convincing hack and slash on the platform, and that was mostly IR-based.

[TransatlanticFoe]

Super Mario Bros. Wonder

Maybe this should be in the sidescrolling thread (R2RSATG?) but then maybe not because this seems like the shortest, easiest 2D Mario. With added "we made this in Mario Maker" vibes.

Cleared the game, but not hit up special world yet (and CBA 100%ing it). A lot of stages have a Mario Maker campaign vibe to them, following a general gimmick rather than challenging the player to think of more than one thing at a time. Initially quite joyous, the titular wonder flower sections fall victim to repetition as the game progresses - and either my brain is odd, or the controls in some of these can get odd (relative to the direction on screen you want to push the character, rather than the more intuitive relative to the direction the character is facing). Some of them are fairly mundane too - a repeating theme to them on Bowser's battleship stages is neither challenging nor interesting. Usually the difficulty is in finding them too, rather than clearing their segment (sometimes it's a second exit, usually it's finishing the wonder flower bit by reaching a wonder seed). It all feels like an undercooked "we had these great ideas but could only find a couple of uses for them" vibe.

There's not a lot of puzzle elements to clearing stages, only the optional objectives (3 purple coins, wonder flowers, secret exits), so it all feels rather straightforward to push through. The overworlds are similarly meh, which the exception of a desert world with hidden stages and a lot of nooks and crannies into bonus areas - a real shame no other world does anything like that. It's all rather undemanding.

Some stages are non-standard, but these fall into the following categories: "blindly hunt secret blocks to progress", excruciatingly simple puzzles (called "break time" stages), combat challenge arenas (like an extension of Mario 3's hammer brothers stages) and gimmick challenge stages used to unlock badges.

Ah badges. Another undercooked "we made this thing but could only design a few minutes of gameplay around it" element. Most of them are unobtrusive, and there are even some badges that are downright offensive and only exist for an arbitrary challenge. Who wants to be constantly hopping? Or sprinting around uncontrollably? Completely pointless.

I feel like the only challenge is going to be in special world and in 100%ing the game - the latter chiefly because the combat challenge stages have some tight time limits to get all 3 purple coins. But that wouldn't be so bad (2D Mario has never been all that hard since world 8 in Mario 3) if it wasn't so one-dimensional to play. The bubble flower power up doesn't do much (you can jump off the bubbles but you never need to). Elephant is like Mario 3's raccoon leaf but without flight. But you can play as different characters! Oh that's right they're all identical except super easy mode Yoshi and Nabbit who don't take damage. Toad's speed? Luigi's high jump? Peach's float? Something unique for Daisy? Nope nothing remotely interesting there - it's just cosmetic.

It's still fun and everything, but doesn't consistently add anything interesting. The New Super Mario games felt a bit like more of the same - but here the inconsistent wonder flower implementation and lack of flight-based power ups mean it feels like less of the same instead. New U Deluxe and 3D World both have more interesting power ups, better stage design, more content and some core game challenge. A big step back for the series, but still carries some nostalgic dopamine hits.

[guigui]

^
I'am also playing Wonder. Not having a bad time at all, and have not reached the point where Wonder Flower parts feel repetitive yet, but all the arguments given above indeed apply. Most everything could be better. Let me add :
* why not more secret exits ?
* why no ghost houses ?
* why this isn't Super Mario World ?

I never thought I'd say that one day : but 3D Mario Odyssey is definitely better than 2D Mario Wonder.

[TransatlanticFoe]

Yeah there are some secret exits but not enough. Mario World had the switch palaces so you could go back and see what had opened up. After clearing Wonder it shows you how many stages per world you've not played, but as I said the only interesting thing they did with it is hiding stages in the overworld in the desert world. Lack of ghost houses is exactly the sort of thing I miss from the stage design, where you regularly have to think to find the exit.

I didn't get Odyssey (or rather, didn't get as much from it as others - bloody loved it when it focused, like with New Donk City), I think because I didn't have an N64 so had no nostalgia for the collectathon style of Mario 64 - my Mario experience was "make it to the end of the stage". Still, the disjointed mishmash of ideas works better in a big open Odyssey-style area than it does in classic 2D Mario.

[BrianC]

I enjoyed Wonder, but it was over too soon. I didn't get all the purple coins, but I did get all the wonder seeds (or whatever they were called).

[ryu]

Aren't 2D Mario games always short and beatable in a day?

[BareKnuckleRoo]

I don't really consider SMB3 or World beatable within a day unless you're very, very familiar with the game. They both have a large number of levels, some of which it's entirely possible to get stuck on. I was always grateful for SMB3's SNES port including a save function, as in World.

They're much longer than something like a short and sweet Natsume game. Heck, they're longer than Mega Man games tend to be as there's more going on to puzzle out in levels.

[Sumez]

"Beatable in a day" really isn't much of a negative to me. But I specifically never got Super Mario World as a kid, specifically because I rented the game and beat all the 96 stages/secret exits within a day XD
I don't think the game is really too short, but given what SNES games cost back then, it was a question of balancing bang for your buck.

[Sima Tuna]

given what SNES games cost back then, it was a question of balancing bang for your buck.

Yes, and the very same console design mentality is what drives modern games to be such piles of sludgy, dull skinnerboxery.

I think the SNES was the first console generation (and the Genesis, ofc) where that ethos came to the forefront. NES, PC-Engine etc were full of arcade conversions. But around the time of late NES, early SNES, more and more games were made with the idea of "the game costs a lot of money and it needs to keep these players (kids?) busy for a long time." I think that's a big part of why RPGs became a preeminent genre at that time. A lot of other game types either couldn't be made long enough under the console constraints (memory and such) or they didn't play to the strengths of the system. SNES in particular has well-documented issues which lead to it performing poorly for shmups in many cases. But it had beautiful music and visuals, which worked for a slower pace of game.

2d Mario I see as largely sitting in the middle of the arcade/console debate. Mario 1 is closer to the arcade side (although it was developed for console), while Mario World is closer to the console side. But not as close as Yoshi's Island, which felt like a fully consolized experience. Mario World is still fast and snappy, whereas Yoshi's Island scrolls slower and has more puzzles. There's a greater emphasis on the presentation and scripted sequences (transformations and boss battles.)

Modern 2d Mario is entirely uninteresting to me, because it seems they've sucked out most of the difficulty in service to targeting a younger audience. As well, I found that after a certain point, 2d Mario ceased to hold much appeal. I played Mario 64 on release and really loved it, and since that time I've had a fondness for 3d Mario that far eclipses the 2d. With the one notable exception of Mario World. I still do love Mario World (and Donkey Dongs Country, which have an association in my brain. Those were two of the earliest snes games I ever owned.)

I think the transition period between Fully-Arcade and Fully-Console design philosophy is a big part of what gives the 16-bit era its "golden age" reputation. The two styles weren't fully isolated, and so we were still getting a lot of games with very polished, crisp, snappy and dense gameplay. The emphasis was still on games that felt good to play and sucked you into the experience right away. Games were still made for multiple playthroughs. The consolization process of that time was more along the lines of adding a save system, increasing production values, maybe slowing the pace slightly or reducing difficulty compared to a fully Arcade experience. But the games still felt good to play!

Nowadays, my opinion is most modern games have lost that good-feeling gameplay and the immediacy. They're on the full, far end of the "console" experience, embracing all elements of grind and placing gamefeel secondary to static progression mechanics (like skill trees) and quest skinnerboxes that keep the player returning over and over, but all in a single save file, and building towards a very stretched-out conclusion that leaves the player exhausted. So that the player comes away feeling like they "got their money's worth." It's just a totally different way of making a game. From, "let's make a game that's so FUN the player will return to it over and over" versus "let's make a game so LONG, and with so many addiction/progression mechanics, that the player feels satisfied with the amount of content."

Please feel free to disregard my massive wall of text if you wish. I'm just saying things that have been on my mind a while. I don't wish to imply that "all modern games are shit" and "all old games are good." But I notice when I play older games that even the slow genre ones have that immediacy new games lack. They're more willing to throw me into the world and let me figure out what to do myself. And trust me to either enjoy the experience enough to come back, or not to. Modern games are a fucking headache, with all the playable cutscenes, quests, skill trees, pop-up tutorials, bleedin' christ on a stick it's a migraine sometimes to get started in a modern game.

[XoPachi]

I like Mario Wonder a lot and find it an overwhelming step forward from the last 3 NSMB games.
Art style is doing a lot of the heavy lifting sure, but I really don't think that should be understated. NSMB got extremely fatiguing each release. The refresh after a decade of the same aged look and sound was something I massively appreciated. It's beautiful and the music is simply lovely. They made a new UI that feels like a refresh and callback of 80's Mario's typefaces instead of New Rodin for the 80000th game coming out of Japan. It's painterly and breezy with some of the best animation techniques I've seen on 3D models in a video game. And the color choices for everything is extremely striking with new, refreshing biome types to take advantage of it. The game was a playful treat and I loved every second of it's eyecandy. It also doesn't feel like it's using Mario 3 or Mario World's aesthetics anymore. It's genuinely new.

The powerups in Wonder are much more fun to me. I find them so much more freeform and interactive than most in the past. The drill hat makes level interaction a lot more inviting and fluid being able to directly interact with the geometry of the environment. The bubble makes for a layered but not overcentralizing, skillful boost to level routing. The Elephant made the developers approach level scale/structure in it's totality very differently so that it can be used whenever possible vs some limited, gimmicky trash like NSMB's mega mushroom. There aren't as many standard powerups, but they're so well rounded and executed with lasting appeal that it doesn't matter to me. And in tandem with badges it makes for a seriously replayable, dynamic platforming romp. Wonder Flowers only spice things up further with nice bespoke scripted excitement. I think they handled those very well. Not only are they seriously varied, I don't recall them hardly ever restricting how you normally get about like lesser games that'll make sequences like those a total bogged down slog. It feels like they tried with the Wonder Flowers to pay attention to things people just hate in platforming scripted sequences and do their best to just not do those. Even the autoscrollers are a lot more interesting than anything I've seen before it in this vein. The ones I wasn't too fond of didn't stick around long and I think only appeared once or twice.

I think Wonder's absolute weakest point are the bosses which is actually a bigger shame than if it was any other Mario game. The game is eclectic and surreal but we only fight Bowser Jr 3 times and then one of the most tedious Bowser fights. I don't put a lot of stock into these in terms of challenge because...it's Mario. The levels can be hard but the bosses never have been. But the variety the levels have is not continued into the fights nearly as much as I think one could reasonably expect from a game of this style. That was a seriously missed opportunity.
I don't think it's too short but I wouldn't say no to another world.

[Blinge]

Back at my folks' house a bit bored over the holiday season I fired up the ol' GOG and played Ultima 1 - DoS version.

Man what a good time that was. I ended up dipping into guides quite often because going solo was getting me very dead and lost.
So assisted as I was.. finished it in a couple of days and really enjoyed the experience.
I'm glad to have finally experienced and finished one of the classic RPGs

[BareKnuckleRoo]

I'm glad you enjoyed it. Ultima IV I'm a big fan of so if you ever give that one a whirl I'd be glad to hear your thoughts. We were actually discussing Ultima a few days ago here.

[Sima Tuna]

Yeah, on the Ultima front, I purchased Ultimas 1-6 but just have yet to make the time to sit down with them. Ultima IV and V look super cool though.

[Sumez]

I think the SNES was the first console generation (and the Genesis, ofc) where that ethos came to the forefront. NES, PC-Engine etc were full of arcade conversions. But around the time of late NES, early SNES, more and more games were made with the idea of "the game costs a lot of money and it needs to keep these players (kids?) busy for a long time." I think that's a big part of why RPGs became a preeminent genre at that time.

I think this is absolutely true, but in this case it's not really what governed my actions. I never considered SMW a particularly short game. It was just too easy to be really fullfilling for a game "to own" at the time. I'd have like five NES games ever, and five SNES games ever. They'd have to be something I'd want to regularly return to, and something that would take me a good undertaking to even get through for the first time.

I also have a strong affection for the "golden age" crossroads between arcade design and console/home design. To me, the NES is a better representative, due to its life cycle stretching from '83 into the early/mid 90s. But compared to late generations the SNES has a bit of that as well for sure, and I think you point out well what makes it so good - at the time these things were just considered standard for video games.

A lot of other game types either couldn't be made long enough under the console constraints (memory and such) or they didn't play to the strengths of the system. SNES in particular has well-documented issues which lead to it performing poorly for shmups in many cases. But it had beautiful music and visuals, which worked for a slower pace of game.

My technical insight into the SNES and first-hand experience working with it forces me to correct these claims.

1. Any limitation on the *size* of a game are unrelated to the console, and primarily relate to the costs of storage space on the cartridges. Given the cartridge interface design on classic consoles such as the SNES, the amount of data you can put into a game is essentially infinite. I think development costs probably played an even bigger role than production costs however.

2. Such "issues" are absolutely not "well documented". In fact, they are not documented at all - it is purely a bias carried over from the "console wars" mentality. There is absolutely nothing about the SNES hardware that should cause it to perform poorly for a shmup, I'm really not sure what would. If you see a SNES game that performs poorly, you can blame the programmers, or their superiors pushing them to rush out a game

[Sima Tuna]

I think the SNES was the first console generation (and the Genesis, ofc) where that ethos came to the forefront. NES, PC-Engine etc were full of arcade conversions. But around the time of late NES, early SNES, more and more games were made with the idea of "the game costs a lot of money and it needs to keep these players (kids?) busy for a long time." I think that's a big part of why RPGs became a preeminent genre at that time.

I think this is absolutely true, but in this case it's not really what governed my actions. I never considered SMW a particularly short game. It was just too easy to be really fullfilling for a game "to own" at the time. I'd have like five NES games ever, and five SNES games ever. They'd have to be something I'd want to regularly return to, and something that would take me a good undertaking to even get through for the first time.

I also have a strong affection for the "golden age" crossroads between arcade design and console/home design. To me, the NES is a better representative, due to its life cycle stretching from '83 into the early/mid 90s. But compared to late generations the SNES has a bit of that as well for sure, and I think you point out well what makes it so good - at the time these things were just considered standard for video games.

A lot of other game types either couldn't be made long enough under the console constraints (memory and such) or they didn't play to the strengths of the system. SNES in particular has well-documented issues which lead to it performing poorly for shmups in many cases. But it had beautiful music and visuals, which worked for a slower pace of game.

My technical insight into the SNES and first-hand experience working with it forces me to correct these claims.

1. Any limitation on the *size* of a game are unrelated to the console, and primarily relate to the costs of storage space on the cartridges. Given the cartridge interface design on classic consoles such as the SNES, the amount of data you can put into a game is essentially infinite. I think development costs probably played an even bigger role than production costs however.

2. Such "issues" are absolutely not "well documented". In fact, they are not documented at all - it is purely a bias carried over from the "console wars" mentality. There is absolutely nothing about the SNES hardware that should cause it to perform poorly for a shmup, I'm really not sure what would. If you see a SNES game that performs poorly, you can blame the programmers, or their superiors pushing them to rush out a game

Unfortunately for me, the NES was slightly before my own entrance into the world of video games. But I agree with you about late-era NES games. I used to borrow my friend's NES to play Kirby's Adventure, which is another early example of a VERY easy game which is still highly enjoyable, and much of that enjoyment rests upon its immaculate presentation. But being a late-era NES game sitting in the middle of arcade-console design philosophies, it of course also controls well and drops you right into the action.

As to the technical aspects of SNES, I bow to your expertise there. But the well-documented element I refer to is more the sheer number of shmup ports to SNES that have slowdown issues or some other serious problem which seems related to the way the game runs. I remember hearing that Genesis and PC Engine could display sprites faster, or could scroll the screen faster? Something like that.

And when you look at SNES games generally, many of them have some sort of gameplay contrivance which cranks the scrolling speed down, as compared to games on Genesis or PC Engine. The games scroll more slowly, as a fair rule. So, if it's not a technical limitation of SNES, maybe it's a problem related to how to program fast scrolling in SNES games. Mario World does indeed scroll quickly (when running/flying at top speed), but it also uses some very simple backgrounds imo. The speed of character movement in SNES games (especially games where the screen scrolls as the character moves) is rather slow as a generalization.

Aleste games are of course an exception to this. It seems Compile cracked the code to make shmups that scroll fast on NES and SNES.

[Herr Schatten]

Yeah, on the Ultima front, I purchased Ultimas 1-6 but just have yet to make the time to sit down with them. Ultima IV and V look super cool though.

Ultima IV, V and VI are easily the best in the series. The earlier ones are a little rough and don’t deviate ptoo much from the usual RPG tropes, even though they are mechanically sound. The later ones lose focus and lack direction.

The games of the middle trilogy are like nothing else, though, in that they introduce philosophy and morals into the genre in a way that really makes you think.

For IV I think the Master System version gives the overall best experience, but the NES one is fine, too. Both have menu controls that are much more preferable to the gazillion keyboard commands you have to learn for the original. Unfortunately, you can’t get around those for part V. Part VI, thankfully, can be controlled with the mouse for the most part.

[Marc]

Jedi Survivor. It's a decent Star Wars Souls-lite basically.

[Sumez]

As to the technical aspects of SNES, I bow to your expertise there. But the well-documented element I refer to is more the sheer number of shmup ports to SNES that have slowdown issues or some other serious problem which seems related to the way the game runs. I remember hearing that Genesis and PC Engine could display sprites faster, or could scroll the screen faster? Something like that.

And when you look at SNES games generally, many of them have some sort of gameplay contrivance which cranks the scrolling speed down, as compared to games on Genesis or PC Engine. The games scroll more slowly, as a fair rule. So, if it's not a technical limitation of SNES, maybe it's a problem related to how to program fast scrolling in SNES games. Mario World does indeed scroll quickly (when running/flying at top speed), but it also uses some very simple backgrounds imo. The speed of character movement in SNES games (especially games where the screen scrolls as the character moves) is rather slow as a generalization.

Aleste games are of course an exception to this. It seems Compile cracked the code to make shmups that scroll fast on NES and SNES.

What you're talking about is baseless speculation based on one or two anecdotal examples.
Gradius 3? A rushed out launch game probably developed partly towards an unfinished hardware profile. I bet you, the people who made the port would probably have made it just as slow on any other platform. Hell, it was just as slow on the original arcade hardware.

There's nothing hardware-wise limiting how fast a game can scroll, so that's pure speculation again. It's literally just setting a single register with a scroll value, which requires no processing power at all. The only potential bottleneck should be loading in new background tilemaps fast enough, since you can only do that during vblank.
This could definitely be an issue on the NES, but in practice you can easily load in all the background graphics you need to scroll much faster than any human player would be able to keep up with. Something along the lines of 60 pixels per frame IIRC.
On both SNES and MegaDrive this is entirely a non-issue, since any data can just be DMA'ed to video memory, and tilemaps take up extremely little bandwidth.

Sorry for going off on a tangent, but there's so much misinformation about this out there that I feel obligated to point out the inaccuracies that float around - because they are so prevalent that I understand why people start believing them. And I really should just make an informative thread dedicated to it
Trust me when I say you cannot find any documentation for these claims anywhere, because it's literally just hearsay mostly with a basis in the remains of the 90s console war where people were desperate to find ammunition against the "competing" platform.
It's funny how few people manage to point out that by the same metrics that you'd call the SNES a "16 bit platform", you could easily argue that the MegaDrive is "32 bit", which should have been a slam dunk. Of course, ultimately that's yet another metric that actually says much less about a console's capabilities than people tend to assume.

Another advantage the MegaDrive has over the SNES is the ability to dedicate more video memory to sprite graphics. The biggest effect you'll see of this in actual games is how MegaDrive beat'em ups typically have more simultaneous enemy types on screen compared to SNES ones. There are ways to get around this on SNES - for example it has more background layers than MD, and could easily sacrifice one to function as an extra sprite - but I'm not aware of any games that actually do this.

[Steven]

*Has flashbacks to Master System Golden Axe, where the entire game is the background*

[Blinge]

Haha.. what, how does that work?

[Steven]

They built everything using the background layer and animated it. Even the player and enemies are part of the background instead of being sprites. As a result, the game is VERY choppy.

The idea itself is cool, and you won't have sprite flicker because there are no sprites (lol), but the actual result is not so great.

[Sumez]

Looking at footage from the game, it definitely runs as choppy as if the enemy/player graphics were indeed drawn on the background layer.
However, there's also a lot of objects being drawn cleanly in front of actual background graphics with the correct palettes and all, which I'm not sure how you'd do on a Master System without using sprites.