What SNES game uses the SNES abilities the most?

[Pokun]

The only effects that seems obvious in Super Metroid are the window effects for things like the X-ray and Power Bombs. But almost every RPG and action game uses those effects for things like spells, energy beams and explosions. Racing games may use them for the lamps on the car etc.

I guess Mario Paint is using some PPU effects in the various erasure tools, though most of them might just be using HDMA raster effects.

Demon's Blazon uses at least more than 3 effects. Mode 7, wavy backgrounds and various window and transparency effects.

Majuuou has many visual effects but I'm not sure if they are PPU effects.

Kishin Douji Zenki Battle Raiden also uses several effects.

Psycho Dream is another one and seems to use lots of window, mosaic and such effects with the bosses at least.

Actraiser 2 really likes transparent foreground effects and, of course, mode 7 for descending from the heavenly temple on the world map like in the first game.

[DRW]

Yeah, that's the thing: There are dozens of games that use two or three effects each. But I'm looking for cases where one game uses many effects. For example, "Psycho Dream" is definitely not the effects firework that is "Turrican 2".

[creaothceann]

Or can anybody name any other game that's on par with these, as far as the special effects go, only counting stock hardware games without any co-processors? I'm curious to know.

R-Type 3
Rendering Ranger R2

[DRW]

Which effects are done in each of these games?

[93143]

Rendering Ranger uses colour math (extensively), windowing (for one of the bombs at least), Mode 7 (bosses and setpieces), mosaic (death of the Stage 6 boss), HDMA (for colour and scroll) and offset-per-tile (for the demon face at the start of Stage 7, combined with colour math and scroll HDMA). There may be other uses I've missed. It also uses multiple BG layers to good effect, and at one point dedicates a big chunk of DMA to rotating a large prerendered spacecraft around the Y axis while also managing multiple BGs and a bunch of sprites. It even animates the heads of street lamps (as sprites) to add a perspective effect.

It does use prerendered graphics like DKC, but it's a bit less obvious most of the time (not all of the time...). This technically disqualifies it according to the specifications in the OP, although by November of 1995 when the game released, DKC had come out already so people knew the SNES could do this...

Rendering Ranger also makes good use of the S-CPU to push huge numbers of sprites without slowdown, which you don't tend to get in those early games that tried to use all the effects just for the sake of it. And yes, it's a fair comparison, because Rendering Ranger is SlowROM...

...

R-Type 3 uses Mode 7 to good effect (notably in Stage 1, where part of the stage rotates around you) and colour math here and there. I don't think it's as much of a touch-every-rock exercise as R², but I could be forgetting stuff as it's been a while since I played it much.

EDIT: Yeah, I'm forgetting stuff...

[Pokun]

I think only pre-rendering is disqualified as an "effect" since it's not a unique effect done by the SNES hardware, it doesn't mean that DKC or any other game using pre-rendered graphics are disqualified on that ground, DKC disqualifies only because it doesn't use enough SNES PPU effects.
Rendering Ranger sounds like it belongs right beside Super Turrican 2 and Super Castlevania IV.

Yeah, that's the thing: There are dozens of games that use two or three effects each. But I'm looking for cases where one game uses many effects. For example, "Psycho Dream" is definitely not the effects firework that is "Turrican 2".

So I named a few games I could think of that potentially uses more than just 3 effects. Out of those, Demon's Blazon might be the best candidate for being like Super Turrican 2.

[Dwedit]

I suppose RPGs are overrepresenting the PPU effects simply because it was such a large genre at the time, it was a golden RPG age after all. Turn-based RPG is an especially thankful genre because the turn-based nature of the battles leaves a lot of room for special effects.

Well, now that you mention it it's funny because NES RPGs are notorious for *not* using the advanced PPU effects of the NES, especially Dragon Quest games which makes very simplistic use of the hardware even the fourth game which came out after the SNES was already there.

Dragon Quest IV made one use of a PPU trick. When leaving on the ship at the end of Chapter 4, the water tile is animated at the same speed the screen scrolls vertically in order to make the ship appear to move while the water does not move.

[Bregalad]

Dragon Quest IV made one use of a PPU trick. When leaving on the ship at the end of Chapter 4, the water tile is animated at the same speed the screen scrolls vertically in order to make the ship appear to move while the water does not move.

Thank you for pointing this out. I never went that far in the NES/FC version of DQ4 so I wasn't aware. I wonder how they made the platform go behind the ship while being in front of the water - all that without having sprite flickering issues.

Coming back to the SNES I think DQ5 does the same trick as well when you ride the ship at the begining - that or it uses offset per tile I'd have to check with debugging tools.

[Dwedit]

I think you just put a black tile sprite behind the sail at a lower sprite number and lower priority.

[Bregalad]

Oh I guess the platform is just 4 sprites and the sail overlaid with 4 other sprites. Very simple. For some reason I though it was wider than that.

Yeah this "trick" is nice, but much less advanced than the title screen of Mega Man 2 who came out 3 years before... And they STILL didn't have background in battle and STILL didn't have black outlines.

EDIT : So I checked this up. DQ5 not only uses the same trick as DQ4, but they also use it simultaneously with Mode 2 offset per tile, so they can have a ship moving independently from the land, and both of them having different water tiles - one that moves and one that doesn't - using two layers. All this when they could just have used two different BG layers provided by the hardware

[Pokun]

I'm not sure I understand. I found some videos:

DQ4 ship-sailing-effect

DQ5 ship-sailing- effect

So DQ4 scrolls down the screen and animates the water tile (by rewriting it in the CHR-RAM pattern table) in a manner that it looks like its still while the screen is scrolling upwards? I guess the gangplank bridge tile must also be animated the same way for it to work. But how can the sail overlap the gangplank bridge?

If DQ5 used two different BG layers there would be other limitations like color depth or (if using mode 1) having one layer less that could be used for walking under objects etc. Anyway it's neat to see mode 2 used a bit.
DQ5 is also showing the ship casting off after they have landed while the water and land is still.

[Oziphantom]

So DQ4 scrolls down the screen and animates the water tile (by rewriting it in the CHR-RAM pattern table) in a manner that it looks like its still while the screen is scrolling upwards? I guess the gangplank bridge tile must also be animated the same way for it to work. But how can the sail overlap the gangplank bridge?

make the gangplank out of sprites.

If DQ5 used two different BG layers there would be other limitations like color depth or (if using mode 1) having one layer less that could be used for walking under objects etc. Anyway it's neat to see mode 2 used a bit.
DQ5 is also showing the ship casting off after they have landed while the water and land is still.

What colour limitations? But also tiles hare a property flag so you can set tiles above sprites and some below sprites on the same BG layer.

[Bregalad]

I'm not sure I understand. I found some videos:
[...]
So DQ4 scrolls down the screen and animates the water tile (by rewriting it in the CHR-RAM pattern table) in a manner that it looks like its still while the screen is scrolling upwards? I guess the gangplank bridge tile must also be animated the same way for it to work. But how can the sail overlap the gangplank bridge?

That's exactly what my initial question was. But it turns out both the bridge and the sail (only the part overlapping the bridge) can be made with sprites - 4 sprites wide each.
The bridge coudn't (easilly) be made with BG due to 16x16 palette limitation.

If DQ5 used two different BG layers there would be other limitations like color depth or (if using mode 1) having one layer less that could be used for walking under objects etc. Anyway it's neat to see mode 2 used a bit.
DQ5 is also showing the ship casting off after they have landed while the water and land is still.

Yeah, that's when they use mode 2 offset-per tile. When you're wandering around on the sailing ship, they just use mode 1 with the same trick as DQ4 of scrolling the water metatile. The only difference is that there's a second water metatile with the ship's shadow.

When the ship is casting off, they use mode 2 to make it a different scroll position - and also have two version of the water metatile, but neither is shadowed. Instead, one is always still, and the second is scrolling to compensate the offset-per-tile scroll of the right half of the screen. You cannot interact with anything while mode 2 is used.

What colour limitations?

I think he meant tiles of different palettes being overlaid in BG1 and BG2. If the scene is made with only one BG (the ship being the other BG) this brings more colour limitations.

But also tiles hare a property flag so you can set tiles above sprites and some below sprites on the same BG layer.

Not only that (still comes with the issue of 8x8 granularity) - but there's not even any overlay going on there when the ship cast off. As such, it seems the scene might have been easier made using 2 different layers for the ship and the rest of the scene (BG1 and BG2) - but no they went with the more complicated method involving offset-per-tile and VRAM water tile scrolling animation.

[Pokun]

Oh of course, the gangplank is made of sprites.

Oh OK so when sailing the water is simply animated by redefining the water tile CHR pattern to make it look like its moving upwards, that's similar to DQ4 but in DQ4 it's done to make the water look still while the ship is moving downards (by scrolling up).
And when on land and the ship casts off mode 2 is used. Yeah that makes sense, it's a natural way to split the screen vertically.

Yeah I was talking about color depth limitations. In mode 0 you get 2bpp for all layers and in mode 1 you get 2bpp on BG3, so there may be a reason you don't want to waste a BG layer for the water and ship if you need it for other things.

[SNES AYE]

What would you say, which SNES game uses all those SNES-specific abilities (mode 7, multiple bg layers, transparency etc.) the most and in the most impressive ways?

However, there's one restriction: I'm asking for the most impressive games on the SNES that still look like SNES games. I'm explicitly excluding games that push the limits in a way that you wouldn't have deemed possible on the SNES at all, like "Donkey Kong Country", "Doom" or "Star Fox".
So, my aim is: "Yes, that's exactly what I would have imagined a peak SNES game", but not: "I can't believe this is an SNES game. Are you sure this isn't a 32 bit console?"
The game should be most impressive, but still breath that typical SNES DNA. "Donkey Kong Country" uses tricks to make it look beyond the SNES.

Also, this should be be self-evident, but let me say it anyway: When I say "uses the abilities the most", of course I'm talking about games that combine a good bunch of special abilities.
"F-Zero" might look impressive, but all in all, it uses only one special ability in only one way: Mode 7 for race tracks.
While "Super Mario World" and "Super Castlevania IV" use several tricks: Mode 7 for a rotating room, mode 7 for growing and shrinking bosses, multiple layers for walking behind the background, transparency effects for ghosts, light overlay effects, that blocky pixel effect for scene transitions etc.

So, yeah, I'm asking for the games that combine the stuff the most. Which games use "every trick in the book", so to say? Not just name dropping random games like "Super Punch-Out" because the main character uses the transparency effect.

In my experience, most SNES games don’t consistently try to push the console’s capabilities in almost every scene—except for obvious examples such as the Donkey Kong Country series, which we're not allowed to talk about—unlike certain games on contemporary platforms (e.g., Rondo of Blood and quite a few shmups on PC Engine, or basically every Treasure game and a few Konami titles on Genesis). Typically, SNES games use the system’s effects more sparingly, often reserving them for a few setpieces or boss battles. However, here are some titles I recall beyond those already mentioned that stand out for effectively utilizing a bunch of the SNES’ features:

Sparkster
Stone Protectors
Super Aleste
Pugsley’s Scavenger Hunt
The Lawnmower Man
The Goemon series
Yoshi’s Island

These games showcase the SNES’ potential through vibrant use of its color palette, often all three background parallax layers as per the most popular Mode 1, tile priority for enhanced layering, palette cycling, animated tiles, BG3 for HUD elements, transparency effects, Mode 7, row/line scrolling, occasional Mode 2 column scrolling, sprites as faux background elements, multi-jointed sprites, color window masks for some cool effects (see that crystal ball level in Pugsley), background mode changes mid-screen, and even Mode 0. Remarkably, some of the more impressive games on SNES achieve their results on SlowROM, so running well below the SNES’ full CPU capacity. Yoshi’s Island is the only title here using a special chip, though I think much of its visual flair likely could have been achieved on a stock SNES.

I wish more SNES games aimed to dazzle in every frame. Many SNES titles, often still stuck on SlowROM, also seem to run on unoptimized code, resulting in slow down despite often modest enemy and projectile counts. But examples like Super Aleste and Rendering Ranger R2, both SlowROM titles, demonstrate that with proper development time, optimized code, and smarter use of the SNES’ capabilities, these issues could largely be avoided.

Going forward, my personal desire is to see some more brand new SNES indie/homebrew games that actually have a core mission to show off the system's capabilities fully, alongside the expected great gameplay and such, similar to how I know the teams at Treasure and Traveller's Tales clearly went into every single project they started on Genesis with that intention for example, and obviously RARE on the SNES side (but we can't talk about their games). That would just be great to see in modern times.