Why were Scaling 2D arcade games not brought to Home Systems?

[Lost Dragon]

Nobody has yet mentioned PS1 Heart Of Darkness?

 

 

Oddworld:

 

 

Wild 9:

 

 

The Neverhood:

 

 

Good few others on PS1 that experimented beyond Rayman.

 

The earlier comment:'2D games during the PSX era focused more on anime cutscenes and flashing lights than actual good sprite work and most of the sprites were blurry. Rayman remained contender for best looking 2D game for years and it should have been surpassed much earlier.'

 

 

Was a pretty vague, it would help if you could name some titles you felt were guilty.

 

Sega were heavily promoting Heart Of Darkness when at the time it looked to be a Saturn exclusive.

 

It was even offered to Atari for the Jaguar, see Scott Stilphen's Internal Atari documentation, but Atari chose not to pursue it for the Jaguar CD.

 

 

http://assemblergames.com/threads/heart-of-darkness.31265/page-3

Edited September 9, 2018 by Lost Dragon

[Tanooki]

It was a 2D machine, are you ignoring what it was again? The system was designed as a sprite/tile driving beast. The core of it was not made with 3D in mind as a primary capability. When they ran up against the wall they had to throw more hardware at it because of what they found Sony was up to cutting away after trying to licensee scam Nintendo with the original add-on. The device was made for 3D, but basic, a larger ability of what the 32X and the SVP (Virtua Racing Genesis) was capable of. In a way looking at it, the hardware just was that powerful in what was there, it could pull off the 3D that Sony did in many ways but taking far more effort to do it, which is why many called it the nightmare to make games for up until how bad the WiiU was in coding/porting from other things. The Saturn mirrors much what the GBA did in the next decade, a very capable in CPU/GPU/RAM device within limitations that had the juice to squeeze out some amazing rendered 3D visuals with textures but it took work.

 

Ever look at a GBA 3D game using the V3D (V-rally 3 through Driver 3D and Asterix & Obelix XXL) or the Blue Roses (Wing Commander to Smashing Drive) engines? They have the same look, feel and lack of stability that Saturn games do in creepy parallel. Saturn if you fire up a game like Sega Rally you'll notice you get this warping and twisting effect to polygons as they hit the outer edge of the screen, they're not stable like on PS1 or N64. The same happens on V-Rally for the GBA, go watch a few videos. Also other similarities in how stuff pops in or pops out from range or camera movablility happens too if you compare something say like 3rd person platformers Croc on Saturn to Asterix (UK release) on the GBA. You can take hardware thats powerful in one way and weaker in another and create engines to mask that doing some amazing stuff, but it takes work and has side effects but nothing that damning to be a turn off.

[JaguarVision]

It was a 2D machine, are you ignoring what it was again? The system was designed as a sprite/tile driving beast. The core of it was not made with 3D in mind as a primary capability. When they ran up against the wall they had to throw more hardware at it because of what they found Sony was up to cutting away after trying to licensee scam Nintendo with the original add-on. The device was made for 3D, but basic, a larger ability of what the 32X and the SVP (Virtua Racing Genesis) was capable of. In a way looking at it, the hardware just was that powerful in what was there, it could pull off the 3D that Sony did in many ways but taking far more effort to do it, which is why many called it the nightmare to make games for up until how bad the WiiU was in coding/porting from other things. The Saturn mirrors much what the GBA did in the next decade, a very capable in CPU/GPU/RAM device within limitations that had the juice to squeeze out some amazing rendered 3D visuals with textures but it took work.

 

Ever look at a GBA 3D game using the V3D (V-rally 3 through Driver 3D and Asterix & Obelix XXL) or the Blue Roses (Wing Commander to Smashing Drive) engines? They have the same look, feel and lack of stability that Saturn games do in creepy parallel. Saturn if you fire up a game like Sega Rally you'll notice you get this warping and twisting effect to polygons as they hit the outer edge of the screen, they're not stable like on PS1 or N64. The same happens on V-Rally for the GBA, go watch a few videos. Also other similarities in how stuff pops in or pops out from range or camera movablility happens too if you compare something say like 3rd person platformers Croc on Saturn to Asterix (UK release) on the GBA. You can take hardware thats powerful in one way and weaker in another and create engines to mask that doing some amazing stuff, but it takes work and has side effects but nothing that damning to be a turn off.

The Saturn spend most of the time catching up with PlayStation and the 2D games we got from the Saturn where not the best it could do. The Saturn is capable of better 2D than we got and you know what? This applies to the PSX to, sure not as good as the Saturn but the PSX could produce some great 2D we barely ever got to see.

 

 

 

Good few others on PS1 that experimented beyond Rayman.

 

The earlier comment:'2D games during the PSX era focused more on anime cutscenes and flashing lights than actual good sprite work and most of the sprites were blurry. Rayman remained contender for best looking 2D game for years and it should have been surpassed much earlier.'

 

 

Was a pretty vague, it would help if you could name some titles you felt were guilty.

 

Sega were heavily promoting Heart Of Darkness when at the time it looked to be a Saturn exclusive.

 

It was even offered to Atari for the Jaguar, see Scott Stilphen's Internal Atari documentation, but Atari chose not to pursue it for the Jaguar CD.

 

 

http://assemblergames.com/threads/heart-of-darkness.31265/page-3

 

I didn't say there were not any good 2D games, but Rayman won animation awards for a reason. Rayman had large vibrant sprites with fluid animation and well-drawn clean backgrounds with a lot of layers. There were few games that came even close to putting in that much effort. As opposed to the scanned images in other 2D games which even HOD suffers from. Granted, HOD has nice animation.

Edited September 9, 2018 by JaguarVision

[Atari Pogostick]

 

Some of this isn't *quite* accurate. In a way Sega was right about 5th gen consoles not touching their Model 2 or Model 3 boards in technical terms; nothing on those systems had the visual fidelity of arcade Daytona or Virtua Fighter 3, and most general accounts are that 5th gen 3D games have aged "poorly" (which I only agree with in terms of their visuals on technical terms, b/c artistically a lot of those games are still great and a lot of them still play great too).

 

Also regarding quads, well a large chunk of the industry was using triangles, but it was ubiquitous as it is today. And at that time the use of quads had advantages particularly given the speed of typical processors at the time. Moreover Sega's 3D arcade teams were very used to quads and even Nvidia's first 3D card was quad-based, so it could've panned out either way honestly if Saturn was managed better. After all, systems like PS2 were also pretty esoteric and hard to work with, but they also had the market behind them to make the pain worth putting up with to developers.

 

That kind of also leads into another point; I get the perception by many that Saturn was primarily a 2D machine, but it was always designed with 3D in mind from the get-go. However, getting good 3D was always going to be a challenge for any system that generation. Sega simply misread the market's hunger for 3D at the time and thought 2D would have another gen as the big driver in the home, while if people wanted really good 3D, they'd go to the arcades. So the initial Saturn specs seemed closer to something like Model 1 in terms of 3D but with support for a few things like texture-mapping I'm assuming, seeing as how 32X supported texture-mapping, only in Saturn's case via custom graphics chips instead of brute-force w/ a SH2.

 

So no I wouldn't say Sega was arrogant regarding 3D in home consoles around the time; they always planned for Saturn to support 3D, but they underestimated the market's thirst for 3D in the home. Ironically a lot of that thirst was built up from Sega's own 3D games, plus Namco's stuff like Ace Driver and Ridge Racer, so in hindsight it's easy to say "they should've know better", but remember Sega (and Nintendo) didn't have the production facilities of someone like Sony, nor the assembly processes etc.

 

Sony could eat the costs of pushing high-fidelity 3D in a home console by leveraging profits from their other divisions; Sega and Nintendo didn't enjoy that luxury to quite the same level (sure, Nintendo had handhelds and Sega had arcades, but we know what started happening with arcades in the late '90s), so home 3D for them would've needed to operate in a financial space that didn't bleed them too hard and that meant being more modest. on that note, Nintendo caught a lucky break w/ Silicon Graphics for N64, it's an opportunity Sega should've maybe capitalized on but it's evident their home teams were adapting to Saturn's design philosophy and, like Nintendo, Sega always prioritized in-house needs above 3rd parties.

 

I guess there's also the idea Sega intentionally limited Saturn 3D in order to keep their arcade efforts as the clear marquee ones. While it's fun to entertain the idea, I don't think '90s Sega, even a utterly idiotic as things got w/ SoJ on the business level, would have intentionally shot themselves so bad in the foot so as to purposely cripple momentum in an expanding home console market just to keep their arcade stuff looking strong. Especially considering such a Saturn would've made it an even better proposition in Japan where Nintendo was still dominating.

Honestly I can't blame Sega, even after launch of the Saturn. High-fidelity 3D wasn't really available for consoles in 94 unless you wanted a $600 console. But Sega likely thought Sony got some secret tech to get the "textures" in their games. Which ended up being false.

 

If you look at 3DO games from 94-96 and psx/sat games from 94-96 the games mostly seem like they were from the same machine.

 

In hindsight, I think Segas reaction to Sony was silly. Yeah, PSX had demoed games with textures. But those games ended up running like shit. They really had nothing to worry about ironically.

 

In the end the only significant hardware advantage Sony had over the 3DO was memory for textures. I always felt the first part of that gen was in stasis because you barely saw improvements until 1998 and by then the DC was out.

[Atari Pogostick]

Plus, N64 was even worse. It had cleaner polygons, but ran them at 12fps.

Edited September 9, 2018 by Atari Pogostick

[phoenixdownita]

Seriously, can we get the list of SuperScaler games (or alike from non Sega) the OP is referring to so we can check'em out?

 

Maybe the reason they didn't get ported is that they weren't that good .... for example I personally think Sega Power Drift is NOT a good game, but I enjoyed Hang-On, Super Hang-On (the one with the turbo button), OutRun, AfterBurner and AfterBurner II (the one with the speed lever) ... did not dig much Space Harrier, Turbo Outrun, and for non Sega didn't care much about Taito Chase HQ ... can't really remember I played other superscalers back in the days at the Arcade, if I did I have no memory (I think I may have played Rad Mobile and being annoyed to no end by a little Sonic gizmo dangling from the rearview mirror ... and in general not liking it much either)

[Flojomojo]

Yu Suzuki considered scaling a transitional technology since he couldn't (yet) do 3D, which he probably would have preferred. "I was always thinking in 3D."

https://www.giantbomb.com/super-scaler/3015-8389/

[enoofu]

Most of the SNK games used their version though as you can see most ports had slowdown in attempting to do their hardware with software based solutions

[Tanooki]

The Saturn spend most of the time catching up with PlayStation and the 2D games we got from the Saturn where not the best it could do. The Saturn is capable of better 2D than we got and you know what? This applies to the PSX to, sure not as good as the Saturn but the PSX could produce some great 2D we barely ever got to see.

 

The only reason it played catch up I covered, nightmare to code for, but also one I didn't, Sony themselves. Back then they knew Sega was in trouble and they did some sneaky crap to both Sega and Nintendo in that period using both hands of SCEA and Sony Media. Sega wasn't hard to shove around, being the other CD system to own they at Sony paid for a lot of exclusives or 1yr timed port releases (like with Tomb Raider.) It's an effective tool paying up big bucks to cover a developers losses not having multiple systems up front having the game, but Sony did it with some key titles. In other cases, it was the crappy to code for pain in the butt base the system used making conversion a tricky affair. The Media end, Sony would get their clutches into the 90s print media before online took off and early into it too, and get them and game developers to start repeating and coining stupid ideas and phrases which weren't rooted in reality but helped push them as the cool console for teens and adults. Sega got slammed for its visuals despite not being really off the mark and delays (which they helped cause at times) and Nintendo got damned as the N64 kiddie box, despite in that first year the N64 having more T and M releases than PS1 in the same gap. You make systems uncool to the media, then all the poser kids read it in print, want to be cool too, and they repeat the hate and drive the fans underground keeping their mouths shut so they don't look bad to others. Most of this by now is public, if you dig hard enough to get the stories, but I learned of it working where I was back in 2001 and it was both a surprise and a confirmation of some things I kind of guessed at at the time.

[phoenixdownita]

Most of the SNK games used their version though as you can see most ports had slowdown in attempting to do their hardware with software based solutions

...

The "zooming" games are a different beast in my book. Yes they do use the scaling capabilities of the HW but I believe (but maybe I am wrong) that when "superscaler" is mentioned the thought goes to Outrun, AfterBurner etc... basically fast paced "seen from behind" racers/shooters that attempt to simulate 3D-ish experiences (feel free to correct me) ... that's the list I'd like to get wrt the OP stated period.

I'm sure there are some, I am not sure how many and what those actually are.

[derFunkenstein]

Anyhow this is what I found:

https://segaretro.org/Sega_System_32

 

Tons of cool stuff in here. The System 32 shipped with a massive amount of memory for an arcade system in 1990. The reason is the supported linked list of sprites. I'm sure that's how scaling worked. Sure it could scale, but once you hit a certain scale (2x height/width, maybe?), that sprite would be super pixellated so it would grab the next group of sprites and draw that. One part hardware scaling and one part brute force. That's why it shipped 768k of VRAM, and supported more than 21MB of VRAM total. That 768k is more than the total amount of memory shipped with the Neo Geo (and both systems came out in 1990). So that was really interesting to read.

 

But that also explains why they didn't work very well on consoles of the day. Even if you had hardware that supported rotation and scaling (like the SNES), you didn't have enough memory to make anything that resembled the game. By the time a system that could make those ports arcade perfect shipped (The 3DO in late 1993), 3D polygons (quads, triangles, whatever...nobody cares) were already in arcades and the next big thing.

[Atari Pogostick]

The "zooming" games are a different beast in my book. Yes they do use the scaling capabilities of the HW but I believe (but maybe I am wrong) that when "superscaler" is mentioned the thought goes to Outrun, AfterBurner etc... basically fast paced "seen from behind" racers/shooters that attempt to simulate 3D-ish experiences (feel free to correct me) ... that's the list I'd like to get wrt the OP stated period.

I'm sure there are some, I am not sure how many and what those actually are.

SNK games couldn't zoom out, they could shrink and grow the same picture. So what they usually did was start with the sprites pre-shrunk half-way so that the camera can create an illusion of sprites zooming in and out. Scaling games were more taxing and harder to make because when that space ship got closer you had to add significantly more detail. When that ship got close up in view you had to see the crew on the ship, the weapons, the windows, etc, and then they would shrink and grow those sprites.

 

SNK used a cheaper short-cut of doing something a bit similar but no where near the same thing. Art of Fighting is a great example of an SNK game using the "zoom" trick. but SNk didn't have the tech or resources for actual scaling on the Neo-geo.

 

 

 

Even if you had hardware that supported rotation and scaling (like the SNES), you didn't have enough memory to make anything that resembled the game. By the time a system that could make those ports arcade perfect shipped (The 3DO in late 1993), 3D polygons (quads, triangles, whatever...nobody cares) were already in arcades and the next big thing.

 

This is a myth. The Lynx has better scaling than the SNES so the tech was there. I think the real reasons home consoles had limited to zero scaling ability was because they wanted to cut costs. The SNES was cheap hardware with a lot of cut corners, and was designed to make that up with cartridge enhancements. The Genesis was released 3(?) years before the SNES in NA and 2 years before in Japan so there was no way that nor the TG16 were going to have the tech in them even if they wanted to.

 

The Neo-Geo and the SNES were the only consoles that could have pulled scaling off, however everybody else was so far away that the SNES mode-7 was seen as a wow factor so Nintendo had no reason to spend money on that. Neo-Geo was already a money sink and it was not an open platform, it was one of the most restrictive, so uou could only use what SNK had in their architecture. The Neo-Geo had hardware for mode-7 like games and the "Zoom trick" I mentioned above but not much in hardware scaling. The Neo-Geo had powerful processors but scaling or 3D was completely out of the question due to how the hardware was built.

 

As for 3D, 3D was already in arcades way before 93. 2D games just generally were easier to produce and had more success in general until the mid 90's. Saturn and jaguar were the first pieces of tech where it was possible to have scaling games at Home, why Sega never brought more over (theres or third parties) to pad out its library even before they reacted to Sony, i have no idea. Atari did kind of have an excuse, they were flat broke and the Jaguar's 2D tools were garbage. I'm surprised we even got Super Burn-out. While Super Burn-out was more than one the SNES could do it still wasn't anywhere near the arcade motorycle games. It doesn't even touch A.B. cop and that was an 80's game.

[derFunkenstein]

First of all, a moment of derp on my part: Mode 7 is well documented to only work on background layers, not sprites, and so that's an error in my post unless each sprite was a background layer. So we're both wrong, the SNES couldn't possibly use hardware scaling for a game like Afterburner or Space Harrier.

 

The Neo Geo only scaled one direction: sprite shrinking. You'd have to start with a series of sprites and shrink them downward. The Neo Geo didn't have the VRAM for that, so no, I don't think it could have done it. Because of the RAM limitation, it didn't have the capability to store a linked list of sprites in RAM, so there would be a performance hit as it looked up the next sprite in series, load it into memory, and then shrink it (so it could zoom in) all before displaying it. Meanwhile System 32 would just call something like "currentSprite = currentSprite.next()" and get the next in series and draw it. The object itself and a pointer to it were all in memory already.

Edited September 10, 2018 by derFunkenstein

[Atari Pogostick]

First of all, a moment of derp on my part: Mode 7 is well documented to only work on background layers, not sprites, and so that's an error in my post unless each sprite was a background layer. So we're both wrong, the SNES couldn't possibly use hardware scaling for a game like Afterburner or Space Harrier.

 

The Neo Geo only scaled one direction: sprite shrinking. You'd have to start with a series of sprites and shrink them downward. The Neo Geo didn't have the VRAM for that, so no, I don't think it could have done it. Because of the RAM limitation, it didn't have the capability to store a linked list of sprites in RAM, so there would be a performance hit as it looked up the next sprite in series, load it into memory, and then shrink it (so it could zoom in) all before displaying it. Meanwhile System 32 would just call something like "currentSprite = currentSprite.next()" and get the next in series and draw it. The object itself and a pointer to it were all in memory already.

 

I said the SNES couldn't do scaling, I only mentioned Mode-7 as one of the reasons Nintendo didn't bother to try and add it. Mode-7 was more than what other consoles did at the time so it had enough wow-factor alone to get people to buy an SNES.

 

I mentioned that the Neo-Geo couldn't do it, however the Neo-Geo could Zoom sprites in and out, a common trick they used to fake scaling for their fighting games among others.

[derFunkenstein]

The Neo-Geo and the SNES were the only consoles that could have pulled scaling off, however everybody else was so far away that the SNES mode-7 was seen as a wow factor so Nintendo had no reason to spend money on that.

 

Maybe you should learn to write more clearly because you say here that the SNES could have done it but nobody bothered to invest in it. You're making so many arguments that you can't keep track of them, and you're being dickishly combative when someone disagrees with one of them. Grow up.

Edited September 10, 2018 by derFunkenstein

[Atari Pogostick]

 

Maybe you should learn to write more clearly because you say here that the SNES could have done it but nobody bothered to invest in it. You're making so many arguments that you can't keep track of them, and you're being dickishly combative when someone disagrees with one of them. Grow up.

Yeah, if they invested in it it could have "ADDED IT IN" why is that hard for you to understand? I wouldn't have talked about Mode-7 if I meant the hardware already supported it.

[derFunkenstein]

Yeah, if they invested in it it could have "ADDED IT IN" why is that hard for you to understand? I wouldn't have talked about Mode-7 if I meant the hardware already supported it.

 

"to spend money" on something can mean a whole host of things, including and up to developing a game. If you mean to write something you should write it, not something topic-adjacent. If you'd meant that you should have written it. Honestly this is like the fourth or fifth time in the last couple days where your writing skills have caused problems. Learn to write coherently use fewer pronouns.

[Jess Ragan]

Intellivision Jarts really needs to stop antagonizing members of AtariAge, then complaining to the admins whenever they don't accept his abuse with good humor. He's really Brainy Smurfing it up, you know?

 

"Actually, super scaler games would have been possible on the Super NES if they only added extra technology and purchased Sega so they could publish Afterburner and OutRun and... are you listening to me? Papa Smurf, Papa Smurf, they won't read my posts!"

[derFunkenstein]

Intellivision Jarts

 

I would have played Jarts on the Intellivision. We had a real set of lawn darts growing up. Never did figure out why my parents wouldn't let us play with it.

Edited September 10, 2018 by derFunkenstein

[mbd30]

Intellivision Jarts

 

LMAO.

[Video]

To be fair, when I said jaguar or 32d might could handle super scaler games, I'm talking ports, not emulation. Even a game as simple as Pac man has issues with emulation till th 32 bit era. No she's and genesis didn't emulate it, it was ported to take advantage of the hardware, that wasn't strong enough to outright emulate it.

 

SAY WHA?!?? What had issues with sprites? Have you actually seen the thing? I'll admit many games sucked from a playability standpoint, but from a technical one, no.

Trever mcfur, yeah, the game is terrible, but, it pushes an absolute shitload of sprites around the screen at high speed on multiple vectors with no issue.

Bubsy, level design kills it for sure, but it's huge and colorful sprites aren't the problem, neither is the massive colorful background.

Raymond. There is a reason this game gets high praise, with its large, well animated sprites, and lots of them. Glad it got lifted to playstation, as I think it's well worth owning, even though the jaguars current price point is well NOT worth it. (Many of us got in early, so it was worth it to us)

And finally, super burnout, which would have been at home as a super scaler game with its sprite based 3d engine featuring massive colorful sprites moving at "I can't deal with it" speeds, not to mention changing daytime and weather. This game gets lots of hate, I like it, but it probably gets hate due to resembling a super scaler game rather than being true 3d. It also lacks sufficient difference from the it's video snip for me to ignore.

[phoenixdownita]

....

Raymond. There is a reason this game gets high praise, with its large, well animated sprites, and lots of them. Glad it got lifted to playstation, as I think it's well worth owning, even though the jaguars current price point is well NOT worth it. (Many of us got in early, so it was worth it to us)

....

"Everybody loves Raymond"

 

[JaguarVision]

One thing people don't realize is these scaler games ran on expensive high-end arcade hardware.

 

Most of the early 3D consoles focused more on GPU than CPU at the time. A lot of those scaler graphics in the arcades were produced by the CPU since the whole point of them was fast math plus drawing/deleting sprites from view within milliseconds while moving them around the screen.

 

Jaguar probably couldn't run GP Rider. Super Burnout is close to it though, but if Jaguar can barely run agame like GP Rider, don't expect the more advanced games.

 

Compare Jaguars Blue Lighting to After Burner 2. You will see that there's no possible way the Jaguars running anything close to After Burner 2.

 

The Saturn CAN run After Burner 2. It can't however run Galaxy Force 2, with the Saturn Version having choppiness, pixelation, and running at around 30fps.

 

To be honest those types of games were not going to run well on a home console until the Dreamcast.

[phoenixdownita]

..

.... A lot of those scaler graphics in the arcades were produced by the CPU since the whole point of them was fast math plus drawing/deleting sprites from view within milliseconds while moving them around the screen.

 

...

Wrong:

https://segaretro.org/Sega_X_Board

 

The real power was in the actual specialized hardware that made a "superscaler" well ... a "superscaler".

The twin 68K were not shabby but they couldn't move that much data even they wanted to.

[JaguarVision]

Wrong:

https://segaretro.org/Sega_X_Board

 

The real power was in the actual specialized hardware that made a "superscaler" well ... a "superscaler".

The twin 68K were not shabby but they couldn't move that much data even they wanted to.

Not all scaler games were model X, a good number of machines doing similar effects were CPU bound.

 

But even so, the CPU in the System X was at the same clock speed as the 3DO with more features. The Jaguar on paper as a superior dual CPU set-up but the bottle necking can cut that to less than half. All consoles release around the same time or before those were much worse.

 

Saturn was the first console, followed by the PSX to have the capability of running X board games.

 

However the Saturn has issues running Y board games. Then again the Y board has 3 CPUs running 68k without memory hogging.

Edited September 11, 2018 by JaguarVision