Gradius II for Sega Master System

[Herr Schatten]

Don't know if this has been posted before. I stumbled upon it on another forum and found it too impressive not to share.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8PFfYtRALk

[mirkvid]

That was cool, guy hit every target in that level too.

[Ed Oscuro]

Around the midpoint of the level some blue ships escape unharmed, above and below one of the suns.

Looks impressive - except for the slowdown making it appear very leisurely, and the item progression seems painfully superfluous in this one-level demo.

[Austin]

It looks really solid. Shame it wasn't ported back in the day.

[professor ganson]

Nice, thanks for pointing that out!

[Herr Schatten]

Apparently, this was done by the very same guy(s) responsible for Blade Buster (NES), and making one-level demos of classic games on the Master System seems to be a hobby.

Here's a movie of quite a stunning Master System version of Detana!! TwinBee:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CoXBR5jaUko

[TransatlanticFoe]

Same guy who did the Musha Aleste demo for the SMS too.

Wish he'd just do a full game at this point, instead of all these little teasers!

[IseeThings]

it's a bit deceptive really.

he's hit the hardware limits (and the limits of his code) doing a 1 level demo. Probably also used up most of the 'standard' rom capacity.

there are busier games on the SMS with less slowdown, so it's really not that impressive.

part of doing a good port is deciding where to compromise, otherwise you end up with ports that look *great* in screenshots, but the reality is they don't play well.

probably why he hasn't done any complete games.

[Herr Schatten]

I agree on most of your points except the one about ROM capacity. Why do you think he hits any limits there? Even a technical masterpiece like Power Strike II only uses half of the available capacity, and these demos are much simpler than that, so graphics should compress even better.

I do think it would be very much possible to make full versions of the games on the same quality level as these one-level demos, probably even get rid of the slowdown, although I'm not really sure about the latter.

[Sumez]

Isn't Blade Buster a complete game?

[trap15]

Blade Buster's a caravan-style time attack game, and thus only has one stage anyways :p

[TransatlanticFoe]

Slowdown would be the killer. The Darius II port has some fairly crippling slowdown at times and a lot of flicker too, but is nevertheless impressive as an arcade port. Even Power Strike II has a fair bit of flicker.

[BrianC]

The site for Blade Buster also has that Gradius AC Famicom hack (the link at a site with hacks and translation patches is easier to use, though) and some caravan hacks for Star Force and Star Soldier. The Gradius hack is impressive and works with the Everdrive N8.

[IseeThings]

I agree on most of your points except the one about ROM capacity. Why do you think he hits any limits there? Even a technical masterpiece like Power Strike II only uses half of the available capacity, and these demos are much simpler than that, so graphics should compress even better.

I do think it would be very much possible to make full versions of the games on the same quality level as these one-level demos, probably even get rid of the slowdown, although I'm not really sure about the latter.

Trying to copy all the animations, and the large gfx will quickly eat up your rom capacity, it's one reason a lot of ports compromise on those things (the other being the limited vram and slow upload to the VDP on the Sega systems)

Of course these days you could define a custom banking system and put a 128 gig card inside the cartridge for all it matters, but if you're going to show 'what an SMS port could have been like' then it's important to work within the constraints of what could have been released back in the day.

[Herr Schatten]

Of course these days you could define a custom banking system and put a 128 gig card inside the cartridge for all it matters, but if you're going to show 'what an SMS port could have been like' then it's important to work within the constraints of what could have been released back in the day.

Doesn't the standard Sega mapper support up to 1 MB of ROM space? That should be plenty to store all necessary assets of games like TwinBee or Gradius II in a way that's not cut-down all that much. As I said, Power Strike II is 'only' a 512 KB ROM, and that one has much more varied graphics, much faster gameplay and more visual trickery than either game demo-ed here.

I can't be sure judging from youtube videos alone, but I doubt there's even loading of tile data mid-level in those demos, even though that would be a possibility if handled with a bit of care. I agree, though, that the slow upload of data to the VDP is a terrible bottleneck that's hard to overcome.

[IseeThings]

Of course these days you could define a custom banking system and put a 128 gig card inside the cartridge for all it matters, but if you're going to show 'what an SMS port could have been like' then it's important to work within the constraints of what could have been released back in the day.

Doesn't the standard Sega mapper support up to 1 MB of ROM space? That should be plenty to store all necessary assets of games like TwinBee or Gradius II in a way that's not cut-down all that much. As I said, Power Strike II is 'only' a 512 KB ROM, and that one has much more varied graphics, much faster gameplay and more visual trickery than either game demo-ed here.

I can't be sure judging from youtube videos alone, but I doubt there's even loading of tile data mid-level in those demos, even though that would be a possibility if handled with a bit of care. I agree, though, that the slow upload of data to the VDP is a terrible bottleneck that's hard to overcome.

The only 1MB ones seem to be unlicensed / aftermarket stuff, although yeah, in this case 512 KB would probably do it, thought the SMS limit was lower, also thought Gradius was a bit bigger (although I guess I should have known better, with the original being on bubble memory, it wasn't going to be huge)

It wasn't uncommon for games to try to be too ambitious tho, often leading to levels getting cut when in reality slightly less animation or tile variety but the full gameplay experience might have been a better choice.

And yeah, getting data to the VDP was a big problem, even on the Genesis, that's why any of the SegaCD stuff using the 'rotation effects' to do the ground etc. have poor framerates, because the SegaCD didn't actually add any new video hardware, so even after the conversion it still needs to be uploaded to the VDP, and I think it takes roughly 3-4 frames to upload a full screens worth of tiles.

The VPD upload bottleneck is one thing that often gets overlooked, because on arcade systems you typically had access to all the tiles whenever you wanted them so your processor could simply concentrate on running the game, not managing resources.