Is it possible? (Gunstar Heroes on Super Nintendo)

[Multijointed Monster Maker]

I want to know if you think it can handle this game.

Edited May 10, 2010 by Multijointed Monster Maker

[the.golden.ax]

Why not, it has been done in 8-bit?

 

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

 

AX

[Multijointed Monster Maker]

Another question. How the hell did the old myth that the Super Nintendo cpu was slower than the Atari 2600 happen in the first place, and why do so many keep people beleiving it after they've been proven wrong over and over again?

Edited March 18, 2010 by Multijointed Monster Maker

[Bramsworth]

Are you sure you've heard that myth? I've read about the SNES CPU being slower than the Genesis, which as far as I know is in fact true. No way anyone was saying it's slower than an old system over a decade before its time.

[triverse]

 I don't see why Gunstar Heroes couldn't be done on SNES, I mean, Jaleco had multi sprite bosses in their game Robo Warrior on the NES (just search Youtube for Robo Warrior and Snake boss, or just about any of the bosses when hit with a bomb reveal they are made up of many sprites working together).

 

I have an old issue of Gamefan where the president of Treasure stated that GH would not be possible on SNES or any other system due to the multi sprite enemies.  It can be done, just no one really tried.

[Jess Ragan]

I'd tend to believe Treasure when they say it couldn't be done, since they've developed games for both systems. Having said that, Contra 3 isn't that far removed from Gunstar Heroes and has some of the same special effects.

[BrianC]

I'd tend to believe Treasure when they say it couldn't be done, since they've developed games for both systems. Having said that, Contra 3 isn't that far removed from Gunstar Heroes and has some of the same special effects.

 

Treasure hasn't developed anything for SNES. Some of their staff used to work for Konami, but mostly at minor positions. SNES can handle high action games, but Gunstar would probably have to be reworked to the SNES's strengths since most of them use tricks to play to the SNES's strengths.

Edited May 20, 2010 by BrianC

[Multijointed Monster Maker]

I'd tend to believe Treasure when they say it couldn't be done

 

I beleive that is called advertisement.

 

Here is my take on Gunstar Heroes for the Super Nintendo

[4Ks]

Super Nintendo's CPU can't handle tons of moving sprites on-screen at once without tons of flicker and slowdown. Now, one system that COULD handle it is 7800. 7800 can handle up to 100 sprites on-screen without any problems.

[Multijointed Monster Maker]

BTW, anybody still have that interview with Treasure?

[Wickeycolumbus]

Super Nintendo's CPU can't handle tons of moving sprites on-screen at once without tons of flicker and slowdown. Now, one system that COULD handle it is 7800. 7800 can handle up to 100 sprites on-screen without any problems.

 

The SNES has more power than the 7800 in any way imaginable...

Edited June 9, 2010 by Wickeycolumbus

[4Ks]

Super Nintendo's CPU can't handle tons of moving sprites on-screen at once without tons of flicker and slowdown. Now, one system that COULD handle it is 7800. 7800 can handle up to 100 sprites on-screen without any problems.

 

The SNES has more power than the 7800 in any way imaginable...

 

 

... Except that SNES can't handle too many sprites onscreen at once, which is a huge factor in Gunstar Heroes. But other than that little detail, yeah, SNES is more powerful than 7800.

[Wickeycolumbus]

Super Nintendo's CPU can't handle tons of moving sprites on-screen at once without tons of flicker and slowdown. Now, one system that COULD handle it is 7800. 7800 can handle up to 100 sprites on-screen without any problems.

 

The SNES has more power than the 7800 in any way imaginable...

 

 

... Except that SNES can't handle too many sprites onscreen at once, which is a huge factor in Gunstar Heroes. But other than that little detail, yeah, SNES is more powerful than 7800.

 

No, sorry. The SNES can do 128 64x64 pixel sprites per frame (up to 32 per line). That is without flicker.

[triverse]

BTW, anybody still have that interview with Treasure?

 

Give me some time to dig it out but I have the issue of Gamefan where they interviewed the head of Treasure at the time and he made a lot of claims.

[Devin]

Oddly enough, I am positive that the 2600 can create a decent version of the game. The 2600 can easily handle the vertical animation of the game.

 

The only shortcoming would be the 5-bit sound. However, some incredible music works have been created on the Atari.

[NinjaFlicker]

Sorry for the necromancy, but this a harder port than it looks. It's not the number of sprites - Nintendo's hardware has an advantage over Sega's in that department. And it's not the cpu clockspeed - the 68000 isn't the most efficient chip around, and it'd be a mistake to compare them on that number alone.

 

It's a lot of smaller things that add up to a death by a thousand paper cuts.

 

One of the Super Famicom's less known weaknesses is that you're limited in the sprite sizes you can choose from, and, even worse, you can only choose two sprite sizes at a time. This means that duplicating the all out sprite insanity of a Treasure game on any random frame will require you to either waste a lot of smaller sprites, or waste a lot of cpu resources dealing with pixels the player won't ever see or interact with.

 

Either one of which is a bad situation when you can only access the code controlling all of this between vblanks. And did I mention the sprite look-up tables are nowhere near as efficient as they are on Sega's hardware? And that's just the beginning of the brutal hazing that awaits you.

 

I'm not saying it couldn't be done. After all, I flunked junior high math enough times to confirm every stereotype about the non-coders who post here. And I am just repeating what I was told by a few people familiar with both systems, in ways that most went completely over my tiny little art major head. Slow DRAM look-up? 8-bit multiplication? Inflexible limitations on RAM allocation? 

 

How much of that is even relevant? It all kind of blurs together, and my best efforts to remember their exact opinions on the matter probably sounds close to how a hack television writer would fake technical knowledge about hacking.

 

But I do know that the sprites used in every SNES run and gun are a bit more carefully controlled compared to their Genesis counterparts. And it's probably not a coincidence that the games that best represent each system's personality are GunStar Heroes and Super Metroid.

 

So, is it really as hopeless as it looks on the surface? Or are there workarounds to all of these problems, like when Burger Becky somehow managed to port Out of This World to the SNES, using the slowest available ROM cart?

Edited September 19, 2019 by NinjaFlicker

[Kirk_Johnston]

 

Well, if the arguments for SNES not being able to do a game like Gunstar Heroes are things like it's too slow, it can't show enough sprites on-screen, it can't do multi-jointed bosses, etc, then I would respond with just a few examples like this:

 

The stock SNES showing intense games with loads of sprites and stuff on-screen and usually without slowdown:

At timestamps 2:53 and 21:01

 

 

At timestamp 3:43

 

At timestamps 12:14, 19:40, 22:47 and 47:13

 

 

At timestamp 2:46

 

At timestamps 2:10, 12:19, 20:00, 21:46

 

At timestamps 2:47, 10:46, 35:08, 1:00:04. And it has a two-player mode too, for even more action on-screen.

 

At timestamp 12:55, 15:12, 34:01 and the two bosses that follow, 3:01:16 that whole section.

 

The stock SNES doing some cool multi-jointed enemies and bosses:

At timestamps 14:43, 23:48, 39:35

 

At timestamp 2:01

 

Timestamp at 18:43

 

At timestamps 01:06, 23:59, 24:03

 

 

At timestamp 7:11

 

A few examples of games that are already a bit like Gunstar Heroes:

 

 

At timestamps 9:25, 15:00, from 20:32 and onto the hoverbike level, 38:34 the whole boss battle.

 

Note: And, remember this very important point: Most of the games you just saw are running in SNES SlowROM mode at 2.68MHz and are also badly optimized, so only 75% of the full 3.58 MHz speed, and with less than optimal code.

 

If you wanna see the difference just going to FastROM and optimizing the code makes to one of the most slowdown-ridden games on SNES:

 

 

Also, regarding flicker, while it's harder to avoid on SNES if you put a lot of medium to large sprites on the horizontal axis, it doesn't mean SNES games can't be designed to avoid it as much as possible. And it doesn't mean the Genesis somehow magically doesn't suffer it either:

 

The boss at timestamp 6:35 be seen to flicker regularly.

 

Don't get me wrong though, Alien Soldier has some stunning multi-jointed bosses. As do a bunch of other games on Genesis.

 

Overall though, I'm pretty convinced SNES could do Gunstar Heroes, and certainly close enough that most people wouldn't be able to tell the difference just watching some gameplay footage of a SNES version of the game in action, if it were ever to be made and done properly. Certainly, Gunstar Heroes is doing nothing with the backgrounds that SNES couldn't do, not that I can see, and in most cases SNES could actually do it better. And then you just have whether it could handle all the sprite stuff or not, which is less easy to answer, but I think the examples above do a good job of going some way towards doing that.

 

And, yeah, if the Master System/Game Gear can manage the following, you'd have to be bonkers to not understand that the SNES could do many times better, which, even in the worse case, would still be so close to the Genesis version as to make the fact this is even a debate really kinda ridiculous:

 

 

When you really understand just what the SNES is capable of (and it's capable of even more than shown below), it's just silly to imagine Gunstar Heroes is some kind of mystical high bar it simply can't reach imo:

 

https://inceptionalnews.wordpress.com/2022/10/12/impressive-snes-graphics/

 

https://inceptionalnews.wordpress.com/2022/08/26/snes-background-modes/

 

https://inceptionalnews.wordpress.com/2022/11/04/nintendoes/

 

And I'll pretty much leave it at that.

 

PS. Yup, I necro'd the hell outta that.

Edited December 18, 2022 by Kirk_Johnston

[Kirk_Johnston]

But, how about we simply flip this conversation on its head, and I ask if the Genesis could do Contra III: The Alien Wars. . . .

Edited December 18, 2022 by Kirk_Johnston