Axelay

[Austin]

14 minutes ago, Kirk_Johnston said:

I particularly like the visuals in the fire level at 22:08 in Axelay:

 

I noticed recently that it shares a very similar visual style and effect with this level in Turrican 2 at 56:24:

 

I guess is imitation really is the sincerest form of flattery.

 

And interesting to see that Factor 5 used the SNES' Colour Blasting for a nice colour-mathed semi-transparent shadow effect alongside the three parallax layers there too.

There’s no such thing as “Colour Blasting”.

[Wayler]

 

19 minutes ago, Kirk_Johnston said:

I noticed recently that it shares a very similar visual style and effect with this level in Turrican 2 at 56:24:

 

I know you can't see this but nice catch, it is very similar, didn't know other games utilized this effect. You would have gotten a like, if you just would have skipped the bullshittery on your last paragraph. 

 

I really should get acquainted with that one as both Turricans come preloaded in the Super NT. I remember the first being okay BITD but haven't played the sequal yet. 

[Cris1997XX]

1 hour ago, Kirk_Johnston said:

And interesting to see that Factor 5 used the SNES' Colour Blasting for a nice colour-mathed semi-transparent shadow effect alongside the three parallax layers there too.

You really feel the need to put your fake crap into literally everything, huh?

[KidGameR186496]

IMO, Axelay is by far one of the very best shooters not only on the SNES but in it's gente as well. It sucks we never got the sequel but at that point, most of the Konami staff who worked on the game and other titles would go on to establish Treasure. Not every Axelay staff member went to Treasure though, as people like the programmer Hideo Ueda worked on Castlevania for X68000 and composer Taro Kudo recently worked on the Super Mario RPG remake for Switch.

 

52 minutes ago, Austin said:

Not even close. You clearly have never played D-Force.

I fully agree most opiniones on here and as someone who finished it as well, i can Say that D-Farce is one of the single worst piece of wasted plastic on SNES. Holy hell, that game is so #@&*ing bad is not even funny!

[Tanooki]

I was going to joke just how much color blasting and mode 6 gets used in this game, and well, the joke wrote itself once again. :\

 

That said Axelay is a game I got second hand like 20 years ago or something, lost it, only to regain locally when I snapped it up for $40 and I had no regrets on that buy at all.  I'm not good at it, never had the time to apply myself, but as far as I can get (default settings) the game is a remarkable piece of work and this word salad of a review/coverage of this one of a kind SNES gem is quite on point and well done.

 

Perhaps we can all work towards a thread like this, bring some fun back to this, and if certain entities want to peddle their nonsense, remember use the CONFUSION EMOJI and otherwise ignore it.

[turboxray]

Funny thing about Axelay, when you change the weapon in-game... the sound effect is the exact same sound the Home Depot intercom would make before an announcement over the loud speaker system. Or.. at least around the time when this game was out.

[turboxray]

20 hours ago, Wayler said:

Yea, that is definately strange when you think about it. Usually you tinker with these things on your TV settings, not inside a game.

 

Since you are here with your technical knowledge, do you happen to know what is bothering my namesake's arms here (starting at 6:20):

The damn things flicker like crazy. I think it's the only instance where the system can't handle the awesomeness on display. 

 

Some of the flicker looks like line drop by "too many objects per line"... but some of it looks like the unique sprite flicker to the SNES where top layer sprites cells are dropped instead of sprite cells underneath (on the NES/SMS/PCE/MD, it's always lower priority "underneath" sprites that get dropped). Looks like a mixture of both, which makes it even more noticeable IMO.

[Aaendi]

21 hours ago, KulorXL said:

Looks like sprite line limits being exceeded. Basically, the SNES (and Genesis and PCE etc.) are like the NES, in that they can have a ton of sprites on-screen, but only so many on the same line at a time, and if you go above that limit, any extras just won't render on those lines. NES games often had flicker systems as part of their sprite drawing routines because going over the very sparse limit on the NES was extremely common, but on 16-bit systems, the limit is much more generous: you have just enough sprites to cover the entire screen horizontally on the Genesis, PCE, and SNES. Nobody really bothered coding sprite flicker on these systems because of this (yes you had to code the sprites to flicker on the NES), so when the sprite line limit is exceeded, parts tend to just disappear instead.

I think the game is surpassing 128 sprites too, since I can see individual 16x16 sprites disappearing, and it looks like Konami randomized it too.

[Kirk_Johnston]

Took me a long time to discover this boss was using Mode 7:

Edited January 6 by Kirk_Johnston

[robotwo]

9 minutes ago, Kirk_Johnston said:

Took me a long time to discover this boss was using Mode 7:

How else did you think they pulled off such large scale rotation on the SNES?
The few sprites used for seams and panelling in the background sells the effect pretty well though.

[WavyGravy]

I think I actually understand where he's at with that one. You could almost certainly achieve the same effect with a Mode 0 fingerblasting technique that we're all really hopeful someone will implement.

[jeffythedragonslayer]

quick links to the manual now available:

 

https://sneslab.net/wiki/Axelay_Manual_Quick_Links

[Razzie.P]

31 minutes ago, WavyGravy said:

I think I actually understand where he's at with that one. You could almost certainly achieve the same effect with a Mode 0 fingerblasting technique that we're all really hopeful someone will implement.

So we have colorblasting and fingerblasting.  I propose we also add Mode 7.8112 and Loopshittery to the new official terms.

[jeffythedragonslayer]

1 hour ago, Razzie.P said:

fingerblasting

what is fingerblasting?

[OldSchoolRetroGamer]

2 minutes ago, jeffythedragonslayer said:

what is fingerblasting?

Google it, you don't want that answer presented HERE. 

[jeffythedragonslayer]

1 minute ago, OldSchoolRetroGamer said:

Google it, you don't want that answer presented HERE. 

Oh gosh guys I don't think that word was invented for the SNES...

[Wayler]

Yeah, you've got to be careful with that. If fingerblasting in the wrong mode, you might find yourself in a loopshittery situation. 

[Kirk_Johnston]

3 hours ago, robotwo said:

How else did you think they pulled off such large scale rotation on the SNES?
The few sprites used for seams and panelling in the background sells the effect pretty well though.

I honestly didn't even think about it until maybe the last few years. Totally agree though, just a few sprites to break up the background and the effect is sold.

[Kirk_Johnston]

4 hours ago, Aaendi said:

I think the game is surpassing 128 sprites too, since I can see individual 16x16 sprites disappearing, and it looks like Konami randomized it too.

Is the whole boss sprites or something?

[Razzie.P]

1 hour ago, jeffythedragonslayer said:

what is fingerblasting?

It’s a SNES development technique that, when used in conjunction with colour blasting, loopshittery, and a couple other made up, silly BS terms, will unlock the uber-rare Mode 7.8112.  Powerful stuff, really.  If developers would use it properly, it could put a proper end to this decades long console war that some are still concerning themselves with. 

 

 

We discussed using that mode a lot when I helped Chris and Tim start Rare, way back when.  They didn’t credit me for anything though, so don’t bother looking that up to verify.  Sadly, I was on the toilet with a Taco Bell related Color Blasting incident when the intern came around taking names for their “official company records” and missed me somehow and I was left off all credits.     You know how hard (and unimportant) it is for companies to keep accurate records…   But give me a few mins and I can add that to my resume on a free blog somewhere to make it legit.
 

[roots.genoa]

3 minutes ago, Razzie.P said:

You know how hard (and unimportant) it is for companies to keep accurate records…

To be fair, Tommy Tallarico wasn't credited either in Metroid Prime.

 

 

 

 

Oh wait.

[Aaendi]

9 minutes ago, Kirk_Johnston said:

Is the whole boss sprites or something?

The torso and head are on a background layer.  I'm guessing each of the fire balls that make up his arms are 48x48 and use 9 16x16 plus 2 hands that are 64x32 so that means that his arms already take up to 88 sprites.

[Kirk_Johnston]

57 minutes ago, Aaendi said:

The torso and head are on a background layer.  I'm guessing each of the fire balls that make up his arms are 48x48 and use 9 16x16 plus 2 hands that are 64x32 so that means that his arms already take up to 88 sprites.

Quickly checking the first level in Mesen, it looks like they used 8x8 and 16x16 sprite sizes with this game. I didn't jump to any later levels or particular bosses, but I'm going to assume they didn't switch up the two sprite sizes from level to level or boss to boss, because I rarely see that happening in SNES games to be honest. Watching gameplay footage of that boss frame by frame on YouTube though, that suggests it might indeed be going above the 128 total on-screen sprite limit or something like that causing most of the glitching there as you said, rather than it going over the sprites per scanline limit that often. There are times where there appears to be little more than two arm fireballs up near his shoulders and it's still flickering, with half of one of the shoulders just completely gone, as shown in the example image below*. So, I'm thinking going with 16x16 and 32x32 sprite sizes here would have helped reduce the total sprite count and also helped with a lot of the flickering (possibly some other elements of the game would have needed to have been tweaked to work with those different sprite sizes too mind you). I could be wrong on that, but that's what it looks like I'm seeing at a quick glance anyway. Interesting to think about these kinds of things. Still, amazing game.

 

*

Edited January 6 by Kirk_Johnston
Tidied up some writing errors and tweaked things to read a bit better

[Wayler]

11 minutes ago, Aaendi said:

The torso and head are on a background layer.  I'm guessing each of the fire balls that make up his arms are 48x48

His death sequence is so satisfying. First the hands freeze and start to jitter and then BOOM, off they go. The torso and head then fizzle away to the lava pit below. I think Konami used the secret face melting mode in this one. 

 

One little detail I forgot to mention in part 8. After every boss battle your ship does a subtle tilt to both sides before flying away. I always liked to think it's the pilot showing off and giving the finger to the vanquished foe, while also checking that the ship controls are okay after a hard fought battle. That little bit of animation gives so much flair and character. 

[Austin]

I won’t lie, I have never been the biggest fan of this game. A big part is the top-down stages seem like a whole lotta nothing other than cool effects. If the whole thing consisted of the side scrolling stages, it would be a much better, more consistent experience for me. The “weapons are shields/lives” mechanic doesn’t do much for me either. It sucks when you lose everything and are stuck with that rinky-dink shot for the rest of a level.

 

I am busting out the Super NT for the night, so perhaps I’ll give it another try. I have always wanted to attempt to complete its higher difficulty level.