Sonic Mania Intro on a stock Genesis!

[+-^CrossBow^-]

Yeap, ever after 28 years, the stock Genesis hardware can still do amazing things! This is being programmed by Matteus on the Sega-16 forums. Very impressive to see this running on stock hardware.

 

https://youtu.be/8CoksU5DiR0

Edited August 18, 2017 by -^Cro§Bow^-

[+chicgamer]

Cool. I wonder how long it will take for someone to make a scaled-back version of Sonic Mania that runs of actual hardware.

[+-^CrossBow^-]

Cool. I wonder how long it will take for someone to make a scaled-back version of Sonic Mania that runs of actual hardware.

 

Well that isn't likely to happen for a number of reasons. This intro alone takes a full 4MB of rom space to run. So there isn't any left for actual game code. There are ways to use bank switching techniques on Genesis games but the guy that did this was only interested in getting a version of the intro ported. Interesting, there is also a Sega CD version of the intro that has actual audio ripped from game properly. But due to limitations in the Sega CD the colors can only be 16bit dithered? The Intro on the actual Genesis hardware has more colors in it and uses VGM composed music for the audio.

[+chicgamer]

Emphasis on the "scaled-back."

 

I've yet to play Sonic Mania, but isn't the gameplay very similar to the original Sonic games? Given that the Mega Everdrive can run Ultimate Mortal Kombat Trilogy, which is around 13 MB, I'm curious whether anyone will try it.

[Yakumo1975]

Emphasis on the "scaled-back."

 

I've yet to play Sonic Mania, but isn't the gameplay very similar to the original Sonic games? Given that the Mega Everdrive can run Ultimate Mortal Kombat Trilogy, which is around 13 MB, I'm curious whether anyone will try it.

How can the EverDrive play Ultimate Mortal Kombat at 13MB when it won't even play the second Taitan demo which is 7MB? Maybe the EverDrive X7 could run it but the X5 can't.

[+-^CrossBow^-]

Yes...the X7 can play the second Titan Demo. But as I've not found a way to force my NTSC Genesis to go into a 50hz mode I can't actually play it. The first one will play just fine, course that one is only a 4MB rom. Either way, the X7 is able to start it up.

[+chicgamer]

I was mistaken about Ultimate Mortal Kombat Trilogy. I had a 13 MB version, but that didn't work beyond the title screen. I have another 10 MB version that works without issue on the X7. I'm not sure if the 13 MB didn't run due to file size or if it's just a bad ROM.

[keepdreamin]

Neat, but video on the Genesis isn't a new thing. See the intro to 3D blast. They were just limited by ROM space.

[+-^CrossBow^-]

Neat, but video on the Genesis isn't a new thing. See the intro to 3D blast. They were just limited by ROM space.

 

See also Red Zone. We know video on the Genesis isn't a new thing. But seeing the entire intro to a brand new modern game being played on the Genesis, especially when it is a Sonic the Hedgehog game that has been made in the styling of the 16-bit era is pretty darn cool to see! That is the real reason for the post.

[racketboy]

Very cool! I wonder how much cartridge storage that took up. Kinda reminds me of how I was awed by the Sonic CD intro (although that also had the CD-audio). When that came out I almost passed out from excitement. One of my friends had it hooked up to his good speaker system and it felt unreal at the time -- like the future was happening

[+-^CrossBow^-]

Very cool! I wonder how much cartridge storage that took up. Kinda reminds me of how I was awed by the Sonic CD intro (although that also had the CD-audio). When that came out I almost passed out from excitement. One of my friends had it hooked up to his good speaker system and it felt unreal at the time -- like the future was happening

Takes up a full 4Mb of cart size, so pretty much a cart of this would only contain the intro sequence shown here. Matteus is looking at other methods to see if further compression is possible by using less tiles to create the overall images etc. Way over my head, but I think he is trying to get it to nearly half in the end. Eitherway, this intro video is technically superior to the SonicCD intro in that is has more colors with the same amount of frames I believe and while SonicCD is using redbook audio and that is excellent for the time, it is still quite impressive to see the XGM driver being used in this demo with a musical rendition composed here for the intro music in sync like this. BTW...there has been like 4 other updates since I first posted it, with each being better sounding, more optimized and more in sync.

 

 

Rom is found here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7ZSyI6GpMXgRzh6ZC15TTNUcjA/view

 

Here is a cool comparison someone did between the earlier SegaCD conversion for the Intro vs the Genesis/MD one. Again, the native Genesis hardware is able to do this with higher color palette as compared to the SegaCD.

Edited August 26, 2017 by -^Cro§Bow^-

[racketboy]

Oh wow that is SO cool. thanks for sharing!

[MortoffGames]

A shout out for one of the best systems of all time.

[Atari PAC-MAN Fan]

Sonic Mania is AMAZING!!!!!!!!!

[derFunkenstein]

Since I haven't seen the actual intro to Sonic Mania (holding out for the PC vesion since I don't have any current consoles), I don't know which one is right, but the Genesis version clearly plays back slower than the Sega CD version. During all the opening credits the Genesis gets upwards of a full second ahead, but by the time you see Sonic, Knuckles, and Tails together the Sega CD has caught up, and it keeps pulling ahead. Is the animation on the Sega CD too fast, or is the animation on the Genesis too slow?

[+-^CrossBow^-]

Since I haven't seen the actual intro to Sonic Mania (holding out for the PC vesion since I don't have any current consoles), I don't know which one is right, but the Genesis version clearly plays back slower than the Sega CD version. During all the opening credits the Genesis gets upwards of a full second ahead, but by the time you see Sonic, Knuckles, and Tails together the Sega CD has caught up, and it keeps pulling ahead. Is the animation on the Sega CD too fast, or is the animation on the Genesis too slow?

Interesting you say this...here is what was done on this.

 

Originally the video playback of the Genesis version was too fast as compared to the audio. So different versions of the rom have been made to adjust the video playback to get it more in sync with the audio.

 

Now..having said that, the audio is a composed version of the original audio from the game. So it is quite possible that the original video playback was right on the mark in regards to actual playback length, but the newly composed audio music for it may not be and that is evident in the videos since the entire things ends as you said...later than the sega CD vesion does. The sega CD version is the video ripped to FMV format for the sega CD and the audio was ripped from the actual game as well.

 

So I really think the difference between them is the fact that the Genesis version is using XGM composed audio instead of the actual music from the game. The video was adjusted to match.

 

Look at this comparison between the Sega Genesis Intro vs the actual game's intro on the PC/XB1/PS4/ and Switch. This is much more in sync. Some frames still don't match between the two, but they do match up in many places and pretty much end at the same time.

 

Edited August 29, 2017 by -^Cro§Bow^-

[derFunkenstein]

Look at this comparison between the Sega Genesis Intro vs the actual game's intro on the PC/XB1/PS4/ and Switch. This is much more in sync. Some frames still don't match between the two, but they do match up in many places and pretty much end at the same time.

 

They end at the same time, but they do start around 1s apart. Impossible to tell which is "right" if you watch them individually, but side-by-side the Genesis one gets past the corporate logos faster and plays the video slightly slower, so they wind up together.

 

Regardless it's a pretty impressive feat for the 28-year-old hardware.

Edited August 29, 2017 by derFunkenstein

[+-^CrossBow^-]

I think the reason the logos go by so much faster has to do with how the FMV is being rendered. I'm not a programmer, but I believe Matteus is doing this with tiling. So it would make sense that with less actual stuff to display, the information to process is much less. The Logos only take up a small portion of the center of the viewing area and surrounded by a solid black color. Also there aren't nearly as many frames of course in the Genesis version and again, that was done for the way it was programmed I believe.