[demo] SNES Sonic

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tokumaru
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Re: [demo] SNES Sonic

Post by tokumaru »

iNCEPTIONAL wrote: Sun Feb 20, 2022 10:33 amWere you alive during the 16-bit era?
Sure was. Had to choose between an SNES and a Genesis for my 10th birthday in early '92. I went with the Genesis.
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Re: [demo] SNES Sonic

Post by Pokun »

Many of the regulars here are probably too old to remember the 16-bit war, not too young (this is still primarily an 8-bit forum). I grew up in the '80s and '90s playing the NES and SNES so I remember it well.

If I understands it right, Sega won the 16-bit war in Brazil, but not with the Genesis but with the Master System outselling the Genesis!
Sega was also big in central Europe and in UK, and won the European 16-bit war. However, Nintendo dominated in Scandinavia, where I'm from (Sweden), in both the 8-bit and 16-bit eras until Sony dethroned them with the PlayStation, though the Nintendo 64 still did well and better than the Saturn.

I agree with Tokumaru though, the 16-bit war was a schoolyard thing that I've long left behind. I embrace both Nintendo and Sega now, and own many consoles from both companies. I find it pretty silly when adult people are still trying to prove that Blast Processing exists or seriously argues that one console is superior in every way than another and so on.
iNCEPTIONAL

Re: [demo] SNES Sonic

Post by iNCEPTIONAL »

tokumaru wrote: Sun Feb 20, 2022 11:23 am
iNCEPTIONAL wrote: Sun Feb 20, 2022 10:33 amWere you alive during the 16-bit era?
Sure was. Had to choose between an SNES and a Genesis for my 10th birthday in early '92. I went with the Genesis.
Yeah, so just imagine if there were constant new SNES games coming out, some of them just brilliant, and amazing demos of people showing the stock SNES doing stuff we all thought was impossible until they did it (like the SNES version of Sonic the Hedgehog), and many vocal hardcore fanboys on YouTube and dev blogs were constantly boasting how superior the SNES is to the Genesis, showing examples of it doing games all the Genesis fanboys held up for decades as examples of something the SNES just couldn't do, and proclaiming how pathetic the Genesis is because it can't show many colours on the screen and only has two backgrounds and its controller is crap and so on, and the SNES was still selling tens of thousands of units in Brazil every years while the Genesis wasn't, and those homebrew guys are still churning out the new games (a new one each month it seems) . . . and then tell me the console war wouldn't matter to you as a mature adult, if the situation was that way around. . . .

So, yeah, the console war is alive and well, and right now the Genesis developers are really stepping it up and knocking it out the park, which the Genesis fanboys are obviously lapping up and holding high above their heads in a symbolic gesture of victory, and for anyone who was on the other side of that war back in the day, I think it's time they stepped up too. And my opinion is that only people who think they've won the war already or are currently winning it think it's just for children to fight about.

Basically, sure, most of the Genesis fans are just fine and dandy with the way things are right now; they're starting to claw back in a war that most people thought was done and dusted 30+ years ago--but clearly wasn't. And I don't think quite so many of the SNES fans should be so lackadaisical about it, or before they know it, the SNES will have lost the actual war and all our childhood history and indeed the history books will slowly but surely begin to be re-written to fit the new narrative (like some Genesis evangelists actually trying to claim the Genesis really sold as much as over 40 million units total by clawing random figures from whatever suspect sources they can dig up, including all the crappy third party Tec Toy versions that were shovelled out, and even counting a portable system like the Nomad in those figure sometimes. Next year they're probably have found even more sources to say it was closer to 50 million. And then they'll be saying Nintendo's figures were fake and the Genesis actually sold more units in total than the SNES. It's getting absurd).

Me, nope, I'm old as hell (45) and I'm not happy to take it lying down.
Last edited by iNCEPTIONAL on Sun Feb 20, 2022 1:44 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: [demo] SNES Sonic

Post by iNCEPTIONAL »

Pokun wrote: Sun Feb 20, 2022 11:30 am Many of the regulars here are probably too old to remember the 16-bit war, not too young (this is still primarily an 8-bit forum). I grew up in the '80s and '90s playing the NES and SNES so I remember it well.

If I understands it right, Sega won the 16-bit war in Brazil, but not with the Genesis but with the Master System outselling the Genesis!
Sega was also big in central Europe and in UK, and won the European 16-bit war. However, Nintendo dominated in Scandinavia, where I'm from (Sweden), in both the 8-bit and 16-bit eras until Sony dethroned them with the PlayStation, though the Nintendo 64 still did well and better than the Saturn.

I agree with Tokumaru though, the 16-bit war was a schoolyard thing that I've long left behind. I embrace both Nintendo and Sega now, and own many consoles from both companies. I find it pretty silly when adult people are still trying to prove that Blast Processing exists or seriously argues that one console is superior in every way than another and so on.
Trust me, if you were once primarily a SNES kid (which presumably means you still secretly hold a place in your heart for it over the Genesis and the like), it will seem less silly if this situation continues and all the Genesis defenders start re-writing history to suit their new narrative, and with the new evidence to back it up. . . .

It's no big deal until you start to notice your childhood is being distorted by the new story people are starting to tell in YouTube videos and forums and so on, which is that the SNES is slow and low-res as usual and the Genesis is superior because of its "Blast Processing", that is has better games, that its controller is better, that games that came out on both it and the SNES were always better on Genesis, even often comparing Sega CD games directly to SNES games (as if it wasn't an add-on that cost $300 over the stock console), and so on . . . .

The war never ended, and what was once a pretty clear victory to most people back in the day, even if some arguments could still be had either way, is starting to get murky.

Me--I do not like it one bit.

LOL
Last edited by iNCEPTIONAL on Sun Feb 20, 2022 1:37 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: [demo] SNES Sonic

Post by iNCEPTIONAL »

What's funny is that I honestly never really got involved in the console wars back as a kid--the victory for the SNES seemed so clear to me that I didn't even have to bother--and it took 30+ years and a bunch of hardcore Genesis fans and indeed fanboys online to convince me it's time actually start giving a crap, or else all that I hold dear, all those cherished memories might just start to get tarnished and slowly picked at and destroyed by a bunch of extremely dedicated and talented people trying extremely hard to prove their own point (and succeeding more and more each day), if I don't stand again in the corner of the console I picked as a child and 30+ years later show that the victory was actually more than deserved. If it was worth standing for as a kid, it should be worth standing for as an adult, otherwise that's like saying the kid you once were is worth less than the adult you have now become--except the kid in you was everything that was the absolute best in you, full of wonder and imagination and dreams, before the real world made you grow up and get all serious and think things like electricity bills and office politics are what matters. No, the SNES being the king of the consoles is what matters! 8-)
Last edited by iNCEPTIONAL on Sun Feb 20, 2022 1:35 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: [demo] SNES Sonic

Post by tokumaru »

I honestly never experienced much of this "war" when I was a kid. There was the occasional kid proclaiming their console as the best, but me and my close friends would be happy to go to each other's places and play with a console different from our own. We would often argue about which *games* were better, regardless of the console.

My impression here in Brazil is that the SEGA vs. Nintendo war during the 8 and 16-bit era never had a clear winner... The Master System obviously beat the NES in its original form, but so many people had Famiclones that the spirit of the NES was very ubiquitous anyway.

When the 16-bit consoles came, I personally don't remember seeing a significantly larger number of one console over the other in people's homes. Among my friends in particular, maybe the SNES was a little more common, but it was a small difference.
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Re: [demo] SNES Sonic

Post by Pokun »

Well I didn't really enjoy the war on the schoolyard back in the day, it often felt like an excuse for bullying that lone boy with a ZX Spectrum or Sega in class when everyone else played Commodore 64 or Nintendo, and excuses for bullying could be exactly anything no matter how silly it was.
I did enjoy the war in gaming magazines however, and the games the companies competed with as a result of it. I also greatly enjoyed being able to play on a system I didn't have myself at a friend's house like Tokumaru.

And yes I was a Nintendo fanboy as a kid and will always be partial to Nintendo. I'm not sticking the head in the sand for facts however. The Mega Drive is faster than the SNES and better at doing certain things. The 68K is supposedly much better for C (which many MD homebrewers use). I also have a love for the arcade-like hardware used in the MD (I mean the 68K, Z80, PSG and FM chip combination was common in the arcades where Sega were kings) and the VDP is very cool. I think the system should be valued for its library though and in that case the SNES easily wins since it has more than double the amount of titles, even if counting Japan alone, and thus naturally has more quality titles. I'm also a big fan of RPGs which makes the NES (or better, the Famicom) and the SNES the best or close to the best systems in history with all the best DQ, FF and Mother titles and whatnot.
The Mega Drive still has some fantastic exclusives however (Phantasy Star II, Langrisser, Castlevania: Bloodlines, Gunstar Heroes and Assault Suits Leynos comes to mind). For the next generation Sony easily won with a larger and more varied library (and especially more RPGs), though I personally am biased towards both the Nintendo 64 and the Saturn than to the Playstation.


Well I agree with you that the SNES really needs more homebrew. The SNES jam was a great initiative, it's just too bad that I'm not yet a good enough programmer to be able to join it. I hope more jams will happen so that I can join some day.

Though tech demos are really cool and exciting I'm not too much for stretching the limits of the system myself, and I would like to see more aesthetic homebrew work. I'm more of an artist than a programmer, and I value the artistic side of things highly.
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Re: [demo] SNES Sonic

Post by iNCEPTIONAL »

Pokun wrote: Sun Feb 20, 2022 2:06 pm Well I didn't really enjoy the war on the schoolyard back in the day, it often felt like an excuse for bullying that lone boy with a ZX Spectrum or Sega in class when everyone else played Commodore 64 or Nintendo, and excuses for bullying could be exactly anything no matter how silly it was.
I did enjoy the war in gaming magazines however, and the games the companies competed with as a result of it. I also greatly enjoyed being able to play on a system I didn't have myself at a friend's house like Tokumaru.

And yes I was a Nintendo fanboy as a kid and will always be partial to Nintendo. I'm not sticking the head in the sand for facts however. The Mega Drive is faster than the SNES and better at doing certain things. The 68K is supposedly much better for C (which many MD homebrewers use). I also have a love for the arcade-like hardware used in the MD (I mean the 68K, Z80, PSG and FM chip combination was common in the arcades where Sega were kings) and the VDP is very cool. I think the system should be valued for its library though and in that case the SNES easily wins since it has more than double the amount of titles, even if counting Japan alone, and thus naturally has more quality titles. I'm also a big fan of RPGs which makes the NES (or better, the Famicom) and the SNES the best or close to the best systems in history with all the best DQ, FF and Mother titles and whatnot.
The Mega Drive still has some fantastic exclusives however (Phantasy Star II, Langrisser, Castlevania: Bloodlines, Gunstar Heroes and Assault Suits Leynos comes to mind). For the next generation Sony easily won with a larger and more varied library (and especially more RPGs), though I personally am biased towards both the Nintendo 64 and the Saturn than to the Playstation.


Well I agree with you that the SNES really needs more homebrew. The SNES jam was a great initiative, it's just too bad that I'm not yet a good enough programmer to be able to join it. I hope more jams will happen so that I can join some day.

Though tech demos are really cool and exciting I'm not too much for stretching the limits of the system myself, and I would like to see more aesthetic homebrew work. I'm more of an artist than a programmer, and I value the artistic side of things highly.
The great thing about gorgeous art is that it can go side by side with very technically/graphically impressive games too. I'd love to see modern SNES games that both look gorgeous and are very technically/graphically impressive. That's actually what pretty much all the best SNES games from the '90s achieved: They had lovely art (even in the more simple looking games like Super Mario World for example) alongside lots of cool technical/graphical feats (like the subtle but cool use of Mode 7 on many of the bosses in Super Mario World) and great gameplay and so on too. And some of the really impressive games also showed off the technical/graphical stuff even more patently and really blew people's socks off (like F-Zero, Donkey Kong Country 1/2/3, R-Type III, Star Fox, Yoshi's Island, etc). I think there's room for both together, and I think we should all be trying to challenge ourselves if we're going to create stuff for this ancient console in the first place, otherwise it's really a lot easier just to create a Steam game or an iOS app (using Game Maker or whatever). If the challenge of doing something pretty awesome on a really limited and niche system isn't largely the point, I'm not sure why people are bothering with the really limited and niche system in the first place--love of course--masochists! lol
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Re: [demo] SNES Sonic

Post by Nikku4211 »

calima wrote: Sun Feb 20, 2022 12:26 am The edited platform sample doesn't really count, it's not worth spending the minute to try it on.
But I wanted to get the world record on it tho. (´・ω・`)
iNCEPTIONAL wrote: Sun Feb 20, 2022 9:02 am But I really want to see people push the SNES to and beyond its known limits. Genesis homebrew devs are doing this on a regular basis, stunningly so at times: https://twitter.com/gasega68k/status/14 ... 7924981760 (that's running on a stock Genesis!) So I'm looking at all the really talented SNES designers, artists, musicians and programmers out there to create some new titles for it that are like mind boggling--which, honestly, that Star Fox demo on Genesis absolutely is--or at least create some stuff for the SNES that's just very impressive. I mean, it's not THAT hard to just make something on any of these platforms, but it's extremely hard to make something genuinely special on any of these platforms. The 16-bit console war never ended, and it's time the SNES started asserting its dominance again, before the Genesis runs away with a late victory 30+ years after the fact. . . . :D
The thing is, a scene needs to start somewhere.

Before we can focus on pushing the SNES, we need to get more and more people to familiarise themselves with coding for it, and we need to continually support them along the way.

The best Mega Drive coders didn't always start out making the most optimised polygon rasterisers on it, after all.

16-bit console war? You do realise that neither Sega nor Nintendo cares about either console anymore? The former doesn't even make consoles anymore, and the latter is way too focused on trying to take $49.99 a year from our wallets in order to let us emulate only a small selection of our favourite games.
tokumaru wrote: Sun Feb 20, 2022 9:27 am I'm all for maxing out what old consoles can do, but not because of some stupid war...
Exactly.

We shouldn't need a war to make really good homebrew. The last thing we need is new programmers losing all motivation to code for a console they really like because of harassment from some stupid stans on the internet. This isn't the Cold War.

What we do need is lots of free time and lots of m$ney.
iNCEPTIONAL wrote: Sun Feb 20, 2022 10:33 am I'm all for both reasons.

Were you alive during the 16-bit era?
No, I wasn't even a concept back in the 1990s(I'm a cringe 19 year old).
That didn't stop me from growing up playing games on these even-then-old systems in the late 2000s and early 2010s though.
iNCEPTIONAL wrote: Sun Feb 20, 2022 10:33 am The Genesis guys seem to have a fire up their ass, and I don't think enough SNES guys do at all. At least that's my impression. And I think it shows in the difference between what's coming out for Genesis, some of it utterly stunning and beyond anything anyone could have imagined the system was capable of back in the '90s, and what's coming out for SNES in modern times.
I think it's good that not many people here have a fire up their arse. Else they'd soon have no place to live in, and they'd have 4th degree burns.

I personally think there just doesn't exist tools that are as good as the tools that exist for Mega Drive homebrew development.

PVSNESLib, a C library for the SNES, is certainly still in its infancy.
iNCEPTIONAL wrote: Sun Feb 20, 2022 10:33 am But that's just my personal view as someone who did grow up through the SNES/Genesis era and doesn't want to see SNES suddenly dethroned and relegated to second place 30+ years after the fact.
Do you really think the majority of people who write about the history of video game consoles nowadays are going to have biases about video game consoles from the 1990s? How about further into the future, where most of the people writing this gaming history weren't around at the time?

Video game journalists already get enough stuff blatantly wrong without having a bias towards a console manufacturer.

Take it slow and easy. Console wars don't get us anywhere like this.
iNCEPTIONAL wrote: Sun Feb 20, 2022 10:33 am I actually care--the 16-bit console war was a huge deal to many of us growing up--and I want to fight for the console I picked as a kid all those years ago (and would again).

So, yeah, I wanna make a new SNES game because I love SNES. And I wanna make a new SNES game also to remind people just why it won the console war in the first place all these years ago.
Make any game you want to make, but please don't let nostalgia tear yourself apart.
iNCEPTIONAL wrote: Sun Feb 20, 2022 12:29 pm Yeah, so just imagine if there were constant new SNES games coming out, some of them just brilliant, and amazing demos of people showing the stock SNES doing stuff we all thought was impossible until they did it (like the SNES version of Sonic the Hedgehog), and many vocal hardcore fanboys on YouTube and dev blogs were constantly boasting how superior the SNES is to the Genesis, showing examples of it doing games all the Genesis fanboys held up for decades as examples of something the SNES just couldn't do, and proclaiming how pathetic the Genesis is because it can't show many colours on the screen and only has two backgrounds and its controller is crap and so on, and the SNES was still selling tens of thousands of units in Brazil every years while the Genesis wasn't, and those homebrew guys are still churning out the new games (a new one each month it seems) . . . and then tell me the console war wouldn't matter to you as a mature adult, if the situation was that way around. . . .
Okay, imagined. The war still doesn't matter to me as a grown 19-year old.
iNCEPTIONAL wrote: Sun Feb 20, 2022 12:29 pm Basically, sure, most of the Genesis fans are just fine and dandy with the way things are right now; they're starting to claw back in a war that most people thought was done and dusted 30+ years ago--but clearly wasn't. And I don't think quite so many of the SNES fans should be so lackadaisical about it, or before they know it, the SNES will have lost the actual war and all our childhood history and indeed the history books will slowly but surely begin to be re-written to fit the new narrative (like some Genesis evangelists actually trying to claim the Genesis really sold as much as over 40 million units total by clawing random figures from whatever suspect sources they can dig up, including all the crappy third party Tec Toy versions that were shovelled out, and even counting a portable system like the Nomad in those figure sometimes. Next year they're probably have found even more sources to say it was closer to 50 million. And then they'll be saying Nintendo's figures were fake and the Genesis actually sold more units in total than the SNES. It's getting absurd).

Me, nope, I'm old as hell (45) and I'm not happy to take it lying down.
Bro you're really going to let some nerds on the internet get to you? Just ignore them LMAO.
iNCEPTIONAL wrote: Sun Feb 20, 2022 12:43 pm Trust me, if you were once primarily a SNES kid (which presumably means you still secretly hold a place in your heart for it over the Genesis and the like), it will seem less silly if this situation continues and all the Genesis defenders start re-writing history to suit their new narrative, and with the new evidence to back it up. . . .
You really think we're going to be living in a dystopian future where Mega Drive stans have absolute information control?
iNCEPTIONAL wrote: Sun Feb 20, 2022 12:43 pm It's no big deal until you start to notice your childhood is being distorted by the new story people are starting to tell in YouTube videos and forums and so on, which is that the SNES is slow and low-res as usual and the Genesis is superior because of its "Blast Processing", that is has better games, that its controller is better, that games that came out on both it and the SNES were always better on Genesis, even often comparing Sega CD games directly to SNES games (as if it wasn't an add-on that cost $300 over the stock console), and so on . . . .
Everybody already gets everything wrong about the actual nature of the systems no matter what side they're on anyway. Please take a chill pill.
iNCEPTIONAL wrote: Sun Feb 20, 2022 12:54 pm the kid in you was everything that was the absolute best in you, full of wonder and imagination and dreams, before the real world made you grow up and get all serious and think things like electricity bills and office politics are what matters. No, the SNES being the king of the consoles is what matters! 8-)
Bruh when I was 14 I did the stupidest shite. People weren't their best when they were young and had so much to learn about how life actually works.
Pokun wrote: Sun Feb 20, 2022 2:06 pm Well I didn't really enjoy the war on the schoolyard back in the day, it often felt like an excuse for bullying that lone boy with a ZX Spectrum or Sega in class when everyone else played Commodore 64 or Nintendo, and excuses for bullying could be exactly anything no matter how silly it was.
Excuses for bullying should not be legitimised.
Pokun wrote: Sun Feb 20, 2022 2:06 pm I did enjoy the war in gaming magazines however, and the games the companies competed with as a result of it.
Too bad most SNES homebrew developers are not in any way like companies.
Pokun wrote: Sun Feb 20, 2022 2:06 pm Though tech demos are really cool and exciting I'm not too much for stretching the limits of the system myself, and I would like to see more aesthetic homebrew work. I'm more of an artist than a programmer, and I value the artistic side of things highly.
Pushing limits of both aesthetics and technical prowess simultaneously is possible, though it is a lot of work that would generally require at least 2 people.
iNCEPTIONAL wrote: Sun Feb 20, 2022 4:25 pm I think there's room for both together,
I wish that was true 100% of the time. Unfortunately some technical feats require sacrifices that irk me as an artist.

Like for example, some tricks resulting in perspective that looks uncanny valley because they have to be perfectly aligned with scanlines in order to work. Or tricks that result in a form of parallel projection, parallel projection looks flat and boring to me.
iNCEPTIONAL wrote: Sun Feb 20, 2022 4:25 pm and I think we should all be trying to challenge ourselves if we're going to create stuff for this ancient console in the first place, otherwise it's really a lot easier just to create a Steam game or an iOS app (using Game Maker or whatever). If the challenge of doing something pretty awesome on a really limited and niche system isn't largely the point, I'm not sure why people are bothering with the really limited and niche system in the first place--love of course--masochists! lol
Some people just want to make SNES games without having to be subject to high expectations like this. Not everyone has the skill to push the hardware, and some just want to simply make a normal game that actually runs on their favourite console.

Simply making a game for a console this old is challenge enough with hardware limitations. We don't need people to expect games comparable to Trials of Mana.

Having high expectations this early on can end up hurting a community that has yet to mature, making newbies to SNES programming uncomfortable and lose motivation because people in the very community they are trying to get into are being very unwelcome to their efforts.
I have an ASD, so empathy is not natural for me. If I hurt you, I apologise.
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Re: [demo] SNES Sonic

Post by Oziphantom »

I would think most people developing for a snes where alive when the snes was out, deving for the snes if mostly because you like it and you like it because you grew up with it. Not everybody just most.

the new MD games can do whatever they want, we still have historic games that smash the "new" MD games.
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Re: [demo] SNES Sonic

Post by iNCEPTIONAL »

Oziphantom wrote: Mon Feb 21, 2022 12:42 am I would think most people developing for a snes where alive when the snes was out, deving for the snes if mostly because you like it and you like it because you grew up with it. Not everybody just most.

the new MD games can do whatever they want, we still have historic games that smash the "new" MD games.
Well, the best of the best on SNES usually "smashes" the best of the best on Genesis in terms of gameplay and overall polish and quality in most categories, at least imo--this is why I've always picked the SNES over the Genesis--but there's currently no beat em up on SNES that technically even sniffs Paprium, for example, and there's no 3D polygon game on [stock] SNES that even remotely comes close to that recent [stock] Genesis Star Fox demo, etc.

And then they went and achieved basically Mode 7 in Pier Solar's flying section, which even manages to do the effect with two fully scaling and rotating layers, or at least that's how it looks, something pretty much impossible on SNES. Then they make Wolfenstein on [stock] Genesis, and by most measures it's superior to the SNES version, and they're working away at trying to get Doom on there too. They're also working on ports of stuff like Symphony of Night, Metal Slug, King of the Fighters 98, Street Fighter Zero, Resident Evil, Mega Man The Sequel Wars, Sunset Heroes, Splatterhouse, etc, with some of them looking stunning. And they already have great new/coming games like Pier Solar, Tanzer, Tanglewood, Phantom Gear, Crypt of Dracula, Metal Dragon, Xeno Crisis, ZPF, Metal Fury, Demons of Asteborg, Arkagis Escape, and so on.

So these guys are not only releasing brand new games that are both high quality and pushing the Genesis in some amazing ways, but they're also slowly going through the list of stuff people have been boasting as unique and standout features of the SNES for decades and showing the Genesis can basically do them all too. And that's on top of them showing off the stuff the SNES can't actually do regularly just as a matter of course, like 320x224 games with huge sprites made up of many animated parts and a crap-load of stuff on-screen running at a rock-solid 60fps, etc.

All of this stuff is both making the Genesis shine but also giving people actually brand new high quality games to play on it too.

As a SNES guy, I just think it would be nice if the same kind and level of development was happening on SNES in 2022.

Where are all the amazing technical demonstrations of just how good/powerful the SNES is and all the brand new and genuinely high quality SNES games for me to play. . . .

:(
Last edited by iNCEPTIONAL on Mon Feb 21, 2022 5:56 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: [demo] SNES Sonic

Post by iNCEPTIONAL »

Nikku4211 wrote: Sun Feb 20, 2022 6:44 pmHaving high expectations this early on can end up hurting a community that has yet to mature
I'm confused about the part where you say "this early on".

Haven't the SNES and Genesis dev scenes been around for basically the same time but just the Genesis one has actually gone and created a whole bunch of dev tools and stuff to make it apparently much easier to develop new games for it and indeed are creating many more new games for it (as well as have a lot more forums and resources and guides and stuff for interested people to go to), so there's just way more demonstrations of it strutting its stuff on a regular basis (be that via tech demos or indeed brand new games)?

Is the problem that no one or indeed group has come together yet and created development tools for the SNES that makes it basically just as easy for everyone to start producing all the amazing SNES tech demos and brand new games that blow all our socks off, because that's kind of my point: Where is this level of organisation and dedication to the SNES dev scene that's through the roof on Genesis?

I mean, I'm trying to create a brand new game for SNES but I'm a crap programmer, so I can't do much beyond that, yet I know there are genius SNES programmers out there, so I don't quite understand why it seems like the SNES dev community is so far behind the Genesis one in terms of everyone coming together and making all the tools and whatever else creators need to make awesome new games for the system we all love?

Not to offend all the people doing this (of course, it will), but it just seems that 99% people in the SNES community are either making another emulator or more Mario level mods. There's only so much of that I can see before I'm like, who cares anymore when we already have a bunch of great emulators and the SNES is and can be so much more than a third-tier Mario mod factory. I'm not knocking the people just getting into it and trying to learn (that's a great thing); I'm like, where are all the guys n gals that are already far beyond that stage, and what are they doing (Vitor Vilela is one of the few really active guys on the SNES dev scene that I'm aware of, and he's doing God's work).

It's just really frustrating as someone who's real passionate about my SNES. I mean, I've been watching this stuff develop for multiple years now and the Genesis is going from strength to strength in 2022 but the SNES seems to be just floating around. How long does it take for a scene like the Genesis one to develop on SNES? Where's the genius out there who's ready to create the next big SNES fully-realised SKD or whatever it is everyone needs to really take this to the next level?

As I've said before, with all the amazing stuff happening on Genesis, I would just love to see the SNES scene be as vibrant and passionate about making it shine again in 2022, and indeed actually see a bunch of brand new and awesome SNES games coming out for it in these modern times.

Apologies but this is just what the frustration is brining out in me.
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Re: [demo] SNES Sonic

Post by Nikku4211 »

iNCEPTIONAL wrote: Mon Feb 21, 2022 4:39 am there's no 3D polygon game on [stock] SNES that even remotely comes close to that recent [stock] Genesis Star Fox demo, etc.
Just a healthy reminder that the Mega Drive contains a 68000 CPU and the SNES contains a 65xx-based 5A22 CPU. Even if the SNES' CPU is based specifically on the '816, it's still a 6502 at heart.

Even I, someone who's favourite console is the SNES, have to admit that the 68000 CPU does have some advantages over the 65816. That's just the reality of it. Number-crunching is the 68000's specialty.

And don't bring the Apple 2GS into this, either. That computer normally contains at least double the SNES' work RAM, and some instances came with a full mebibyte of work RAM. While the 2GS has a minimum higher resolution to render to, I doubt its bitmap layers use the same format as the SNES' 4BPP layers.
iNCEPTIONAL wrote: Mon Feb 21, 2022 4:39 am So these guys are not only releasing brand new games that are both high quality and pushing the Genesis in some amazing ways, but they're also slowly going through the list of stuff people have been boasting as unique and standout features of the SNES for decades and showing the Genesis can basically do them all too. And that's on top of them showing off the stuff the SNES can't actually do regularly just as a matter of course, like 320x224 games with huge sprites made up of many animated parts and a crap-load of stuff on-screen running at a rock-solid 60fps, etc.

All of this stuff is both making the Genesis shine but also giving people actually brand new high quality games to play on it too.

As a SNES guy, I just think it would be nice if the same kind and level of development was happening on SNES in 2022.

Where are all the amazing technical demonstrations of just how good/powerful the SNES is and all the brand new and genuinely high quality SNES games for me to play. . . .

:(
I agree that it would be nice if the same kind and level of development was happening on SNES in the modern era.

But we still need to support the people who make any kind of SNES homebrew first, because without them, there won't be anyone willing to take small steps to pave the way for demoscene-ish programmers to get in.

The SNES itself is nothing like the Mega Drive. The SNESDev community is nothing like the Mega Drive dev community.
iNCEPTIONAL wrote: Mon Feb 21, 2022 4:54 am I'm confused about the part where you say "this early on".

Haven't the SNES and Genesis dev scenes been around for basically the same time but just the Genesis one has actually gone and created a whole bunch of dev tools and stuff to make it apparently much easier to develop new games for it and indeed are creating many more new games for it (as well as have a lot more forums and resources and guides and stuff for interested people to go to), so there's just way more demonstrations of it strutting its stuff on a regular basis (be that via tech demos or indeed brand new games)?
The SNESDev community is pretty much an axolotl at this point. It might have been around for 30 years, but despite that, it's still not maturing.
In other words, it's a 30-year old baby who hasn't actually aged despite the long time since birth.

The original SNESDev community from the 1990s pretty much crashed and burned, the people in there mostly moving on to other stuff. The thing about homebrew communities formed during a console's lifespan is that they will move on whenever the next system comes out. If you cared about a then-new system during a time frame, you'll naturally shift focus to a newer system by the time it comes out, because it's the new latest console. That's what happened to the DS homebrew community, that's what happened to the Wii homebrew community, and that's what's about to happen to the Wii U homebrew community.

Even if some amount of people in today's SNESDev community were alive back in the 1990s, that doesn't necessarily mean they were in the '90s SNES homebrew community at the time, which required third-party floppy disk accessories for the SNES in order to play the homebrew (mostly demos, but there's at least 1 homebrew game from this era) that was being passed around in BBSes.
iNCEPTIONAL wrote: Mon Feb 21, 2022 4:54 am Is the problem that no one or indeed group has come together yet and created development tools for the SNES that makes it basically just as easy for everyone to start producing all the amazing SNES tech demos and brand new games that blow all our socks off, because that's kind of my point: Where is this level of organisation and dedication to the SNES dev scene that's through the roof on Genesis?
I have a guess that this level of organisation and dedication to the SNESDev scene that's through the roof on Mega Drive isn't residing in Brazil. TecToy didn't distribute the SNES there, after all.

I think the Mega Drive dev scene is undergoing the snowball effect.
Because there are more accessible tools, they're getting more popular and thus even more people are working on making better and more accessible tools.
Because there aren't as many accessible tools for SNESDev, SNESDev isn't really getting that much more popular and thus there aren't really more people to work on making better and more accessible tools to make the scene easier to get in.

Also GCC doesn't support 5A22, as far as I know.
iNCEPTIONAL wrote: Mon Feb 21, 2022 4:54 am I mean, I'm trying to create a brand new game for SNES but I'm a crap programmer, so I can't do much beyond that, yet I know there are genius SNES programmers out there, so I don't quite understand why it seems like the SNES dev community is so far behind the Genesis one in terms of everyone coming together and making all the tools and whatever else creators need to make awesome new games for the system we all love?
Geniuses don't always have free time to do this stuff, you know. They have jobs, and have to spend most of their efforts on those jobs if they want to keep paying to live in a home, which I don't know about you, but pretty much is necessary in order to have a computer and a power source and some time to develop SNES homebrew in.
iNCEPTIONAL wrote: Mon Feb 21, 2022 4:54 am Not to offend all the people doing this (of course, it will), but it just seems that 99% people in the SNES community are either making another emulator or more Mario level mods. There's only so much of that I can see before I'm like, who cares anymore when we already have a bunch of great emulators and the SNES is and can be so much more than a third-tier Mario mod factory. I'm not knocking the people just getting into it and trying to learn (that's a great thing); I'm like, where are all the guys n gals that are already far beyond that stage, and what are they doing (Vitor Vilela is one of the few really active guys on the SNES dev scene that I'm aware of, and he's doing God's work).
I don't know if you already know this, but... (It's depressing)

The person who was developing the best and most accurate SNES emulator of all time passed away last summer. Yes, actually died. Not simply disappeared off of the internet, not simply going on a hiatus because of work or college, not simply losing interest and abandoning everything. I mean actually no longer exists at all anymore.

Due to this huge tragedy, this leaves the rest of the team developing Ares to basically continue this person's work. And that's a tall task, having to continue the work of someone so dedicated to accurately emulating every single quirk of every part of the SNES' hardware.

As for the Mario hacks, that's mostly people who already are fans of specifically Mario, or specifically Super Mario World, and just want to iterate on it. A lot of these people don't have the time or motivation to make an original engine from scratch, not even the people who insert lots of their own custom code into Super Mario World. Hacking Super Mario World is the most accessible way of making a unique experience that works on the SNES, as limited as it is.

I'm afraid the people who are far beyond, Vitor included, are usually abandoning or planning to abandon the Super Mario World hacking community, and most likely will not be interested in making anything from scratch for the SNES itself afterwards. There's only so much time before making Mario mods gets old, and if that time comes, it's quite likely that anything SNES-related already got old too.
iNCEPTIONAL wrote: Mon Feb 21, 2022 4:54 am It's just really frustrating as someone who's real passionate about my SNES. I mean, I've been watching this stuff develop for multiple years now and the Genesis is going from strength to strength in 2022 but the SNES seems to be just floating around. How long does it take for a scene like the Genesis one to develop on SNES? Where's the genius out there who's ready to create the next big SNES fully-realised SKD or whatever it is everyone needs to really take this to the next level?
That's a hard question to answer. It's a circumstancial question too.

Nobody is really ready to create the big 'fully-realised' SNESDK.
iNCEPTIONAL wrote: Mon Feb 21, 2022 4:54 am As I've said before, with all the amazing stuff happening on Genesis, I would just love to see the SNES scene be as vibrant and passionate about making it shine again in 2022, and indeed actually see a bunch of brand new and awesome SNES games coming out for it in these modern times.

Apologies but this is just what the frustration is brining out in me.
Same but we're still in labour, we're not ready to push yet.
Last edited by Nikku4211 on Mon Feb 21, 2022 12:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.
I have an ASD, so empathy is not natural for me. If I hurt you, I apologise.
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Re: [demo] SNES Sonic

Post by Pokun »

I agree with you, there were two other threads somewhere here where we discussed why the SNES homebrew scene isn't as big as it is supposed to be.
I think the main theories was that homebrew for old consoles aren't that large in general where NES and Mega Drive are the biggest ones as they represents the two bigger and more popular systems for Nintendo fanboys and Sega fanboys respectively. The NES simply sold much better than the SNES all over the world, then there is also the fact that the NES is much easier to get into for a beginner than the SNES as the hardware (especially the sound hardware) is much simpler (that's one of the main reasons I picked NES before SNES when I started learning how to make homebrew), so that also helps the NES in stealing SNES fans. I really wanted to make SNES games at some point but I figured I start with something easier first, and I was right as the SNES turned out to be much too complicated for a hobby programmer like myself at the time (in fact the NES was also a large hurdle).
Finally there are more and better tools (and not just libraries) and tutorials that helps beginners in making homebrew for the NES and even the Game Boy. If the SNES homebrew scene is to grow, a 16-bit Nerdy Nights might be a good start.

As for emulator developers and hackers, they are just different people from homebrewers (not saying one can't be all three types). I personally prefers to create new things so I have spent very little time hacking Mario, that's just not what I'm interested in, I figure it's the same for a SMW hacker for example.

As for aesthetic games I'm not only talking about graphics and sound of course, but also gameplay mechanics and level design. Everything that makes a good game, as games are art. Tech demos, or tech demos turning into fantastic games (Pilotwings comes to mind) are great, but I'm probably not going to make that as I don't have the skill nor the interest in making it. If I would learn of a good technique in making something impressive and it fits the game I would of course include it though.
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Nikku4211
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Re: [demo] SNES Sonic

Post by Nikku4211 »

Pokun wrote: Mon Feb 21, 2022 10:51 am I agree with you, there were two other threads somewhere here where we discussed why the SNES homebrew scene isn't as big as it is supposed to be.
I think the main theories was that homebrew for old consoles aren't that large in general where NES and Mega Drive are the biggest ones as they represents the two bigger and more popular systems for Nintendo fanboys and Sega fanboys respectively. The NES simply sold much better than the SNES all over the world, then there is also the fact that the NES is much easier to get into for a beginner than the SNES as the hardware (especially the sound hardware) is much simpler (that's one of the main reasons I picked NES before SNES when I started learning how to make homebrew), so that also helps the NES in stealing SNES fans.
I completely forgot that the NES is just more popular than the SNES and thus SNES fans are often also NES fans so they'd prefer to work with the more-limited NES because of lower expectations and better tools.

That's what happens when you're invested in the console wars. You forget that people can choose whatever retro platform they want, regardless of release period.
Pokun wrote: Mon Feb 21, 2022 10:51 am I really wanted to make SNES games at some point but I figured I start with something easier first, and I was right as the SNES turned out to be much too complicated for a hobby programmer like myself at the time (in fact the NES was also a large hurdle).
Finally there are more and better tools (and not just libraries) and tutorials that helps beginners in making homebrew for the NES and even the Game Boy. If the SNES homebrew scene is to grow, a 16-bit Nerdy Nights might be a good start.
What's wrong with this guide by NESDoug?

I know it's not popular, but is there any reason for someone who reads it to not recommend it?
Pokun wrote: Mon Feb 21, 2022 10:51 am As for emulator developers and hackers, they are just different people from homebrewers (not saying one can't be all three types). I personally prefers to create new things so I have spent very little time hacking Mario, that's just not what I'm interested in, I figure it's the same for a SMW hacker for example.
I only got into SMW hacking when I was a kid because I wanted to make my own game for the SNES without having to start from scratch.

It's this very reason that I also left SMW hacking because it got boring and same-y after several years(plus a shitty community but that's another story for another time).
Pokun wrote: Mon Feb 21, 2022 10:51 am As for aesthetic games I'm not only talking about graphics and sound of course, but also gameplay mechanics and level design. Everything that makes a good game, as games are art. Tech demos, or tech demos turning into fantastic games (Pilotwings comes to mind) are great, but I'm probably not going to make that as I don't have the skill nor the interest in making it. If I would learn of a good technique in making something impressive and it fits the game I would of course include it though.
Yeah, proper game design is way more important than technical feats. It's not often that a technical feat would actually fit in with proper game design, especially if the limits of said feat are so severe it's really hard to make anything fun at all.

And even if it all fits, now you'd usually need at least 3 people in order to ensure everything is quality.
I have an ASD, so empathy is not natural for me. If I hurt you, I apologise.
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