NES Background Parallax Explained - Audiovisual Effects Pt. 03

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  • čas přidán 25. 07. 2024
  • How can NES games create parallax background effects if the console only supports one background layer? It's all explained right here.
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Komentáře • 345

  • @romajimamulo
    @romajimamulo Před 4 lety +389

    Man... I'm sure many developers were very happy when they learned the SNES could have multiple background layers

    • @KuraIthys
      @KuraIthys Před 4 lety +66

      Yeah, that must have been a relief...
      No need for fancy tricks when you can have 3 actual backgrounds (or anything from 1 to 4 depending on features needed. But 3 is the most common.)
      For that matter you also got HDMA which can automate a whole heap of these effects for good measure, if having 3 hardware backgrounds isn't good enough...
      Does make me think of the Neo Geo though.
      That actually has NO backgrounds;
      Instead it just lets you draw insanely huge 16x512 sprites, 96 of them on a single scanline, and 384 of them in total.
      Plus it has a feature where you can 'link' sprites together so that a whole heap of them move by adjusting the position registers for a single sprite.
      The point is, the Neo Geo can fill the entire screen with sprites 4.8 times over;
      so the background layers, are, in fact, more sprites.
      It's a weirdly elegant solution to just... Give up on having backgrounds and instead doubling down on sprite capabilities...

    • @ETXAlienRobot201
      @ETXAlienRobot201 Před 4 lety +9

      @@KuraIthys yeah, that is pretty neat. it also has the fix layer for drawing HUDs and other UI features, within certain limitations like no scrolling. pretty clever set-up, honestly...

    • @neoasura
      @neoasura Před 4 lety +10

      Yeah, unfortunately the SNES era started making programmers lazy also, the guys back in the NES days had to make due with what they had. Nowadays games are poorly optimized.

    • @romajimamulo
      @romajimamulo Před 4 lety +12

      @@neoasura There's also no time for optimization in the current production schedule.

    • @ETXAlienRobot201
      @ETXAlienRobot201 Před 4 lety +14

      @@romajimamulo when you consider all the future issues it will cause and the development time/resources those will cost to address, there's time... but large corporations simply do not care. and this is the same reason they get hacked on a near-daily basis... they also spend entirely too much time and money to add features no one cares about or wants, routinely ignoring the pleas of their users to fix major bugs or address major performance issues. they have time, they have money, they squander it for the short-term gains. this is why AAA studios are now the laughingstock of the gamedev industry. they have the means of producing masterpieces, they're too busy producing mediocre garbage and cash grabs because some "suit" said so, because "trends!". as has been said by others before me: "these aren't even worth pirating"

  • @Selicre
    @Selicre Před 4 lety +497

    This video has some top notch sound effects.

  • @gobblox38
    @gobblox38 Před 4 lety +151

    I love how the limitations of the system forced developers to become clever with their game design to produce beautiful visuals that most people may overlook or downplay.

    • @xeostube
      @xeostube Před 2 lety +1

      I agree in general, although faking parallax never looks better than the real thing so I don't think this is the best example of that.

    • @deku812
      @deku812 Před 2 lety +2

      I don't think they were downplayed, overlooked perhaps as the gaming scene back then was very much reliant on games appearing at retail and rentals, and some of these games never got an international release or didn't sell very well.

    • @j_c_93
      @j_c_93 Před rokem

      What they did to achieve the scrolling background layer in Battletoads is absolutely ingenius.

  • @Raburigaron
    @Raburigaron Před 4 lety +379

    Big fan of the addition of sound effects in this video, it really gives everything a sense of movement and interactivity, like it's alive
    It also helps with visual aid too. It's quite interesting, I'm excited to hear more of them in the future!

    • @alexjones3035
      @alexjones3035 Před 4 lety +10

      Totally agree, I particularly noticed it on the CRT gun, and I loved it! :)

    • @torreywhiting5402
      @torreywhiting5402 Před 4 lety +1

      @@alexjones3035 light gun*
      also, you an orange boy or grey boy?

    • @alexjones3035
      @alexjones3035 Před 4 lety +1

      @@torreywhiting5402 Orange boy or grey boy???

    • @mana_beast_beats1114
      @mana_beast_beats1114 Před 3 lety +1

      So many retro game-loving furries.

  • @jansenart0
    @jansenart0 Před 4 lety +101

    I had no idea that Electrons sounded like Ninja Gaidan boss explosions.

    • @NoriMori1992
      @NoriMori1992 Před 4 lety +5

      I had no idea that electrons sounded like SSTV signals.

    • @andricode
      @andricode Před 4 lety +1

      Yeah, the new sounds effects sucks

  • @RGMechEx
    @RGMechEx  Před 4 lety +171

    If you're watching this super early, the captions are going to be messed up because I uploaded the wrong file! They should be fixed soon.

    • @Portentous__
      @Portentous__ Před 4 lety +4

      They’re fixed! Thanks!

    • @eFeXuy
      @eFeXuy Před 4 lety +4

      Last time I was this early the captions were all wrong

    • @scottgray4623
      @scottgray4623 Před 4 lety +3

      My liking of this comment upped its number to 69.
      *NICE*

    • @Potato2017
      @Potato2017 Před 4 lety +3

      @@scottgray4623 I'm not going to like it
      also i'm surprised it's still at 69 there's always someone who ruins it

    • @christopherthibeault7502
      @christopherthibeault7502 Před 4 lety +1

      Good job transitioning to Subscribestar. Patreon fouled up with its clientele and will hit a lengthy conga line of expensive lawsuits that they must pay. They might have taken your cash to supplement their own and stay afloat.

  • @midnightmacabre5981
    @midnightmacabre5981 Před 4 lety +211

    I love the step up in production value! Especially the tiny noises to indicate scrolling, and the subtle chimes to call to attention specific points in the raster scanning! Keep up the subtle details please, it's a marked improvement over your quieter previous videos

  • @AmyraCarter
    @AmyraCarter Před 4 lety +38

    Someone once told me that most NES games' data was 90% graphics, 10% everything else.
    I never doubted that notion, but I definitely believe it a lot more now...

    • @vuurniacsquarewave5091
      @vuurniacsquarewave5091 Před 3 lety +6

      Not really. Most of the time it's either a 50-50, or 25-75 / 75-25 but it really was up to the developer and what maximum power of 2-kilobytes their cartridge setup supported.

    • @Domarius64
      @Domarius64 Před 3 lety +7

      Well that's true of all games, even today. Most of the data is the visual assets. Now it's the textures and meshes.

    • @AmyraCarter
      @AmyraCarter Před 3 lety +3

      @@Domarius64 Nowadays, most of the data is either visual assets, and/or uncompressed audio files/streams.
      Actually, such has been true for a while.

    • @Domarius64
      @Domarius64 Před 3 lety +2

      @@AmyraCarter I dont think it's ever not been true. The visuals have always taken up the most data. Maybe pong is an exception because it's just a couple lines.

    • @AmyraCarter
      @AmyraCarter Před 3 lety +1

      @@Domarius64 Pong is drawn by lines of code really, lolz
      What I meant by 'true for a while', is since the cartridge to disc generation, music/audio has taken up larger portions of the entire data, when it used to be a lot less, especially when it's uncompressed audio streams in a WAD, or CDA music/audio, such can be as much as sixty, seventy percent of the data, depending on the game itself.

  • @thecunninlynguist
    @thecunninlynguist Před 4 lety +20

    It's always amazing how devs were able to do what they did w/ the NES' limited hardware. Blew my mind as a kid.

  • @CutterCross2A03
    @CutterCross2A03 Před 4 lety +47

    There's also a method of mid-screen parallax involving palette cycling, where the graphic pattern of the affected background tiles causes it to appear to move independently when the colors in its attribute's palette is cycled in either direction. Though that method is much more limited than any of the other methods shown here.
    This has got to be one of my new favorite videos from you! Fantastic breakdown of these techniques.

    • @mariannmariann2052
      @mariannmariann2052 Před 4 lety +4

      16-bit stuff:
      Sonic 3 uses palette cycling to rotate the sphere in the special stage.
      And Sonic 3D uses palette cycling on a 7fps image to make 4 images in one screen, allowing full-screen 30FPS animation!

    • @jfwfreo
      @jfwfreo Před 4 lety +1

      @@mariannmariann2052 Mickey Mania used palette cycling to generate the scrolling floor for the in-to-the-screen Moose Chase scene.

    • @mariannmariann2052
      @mariannmariann2052 Před 4 lety +1

      @@jfwfreo Yeah i remember that

  • @Yoshimaster96smwc
    @Yoshimaster96smwc Před 4 lety +5

    The last effect (swapping out tiles) is actually used in some of the 16-bit Sonic games (using a debugging emulator like Exodus can easily verify this).
    Examples of this technique being used include Hill Top Zone from Sonic 2, as well as Hydrocity Zone Act 2 from Sonic 3 (though there's probably a few more).
    The VDP only supports 2 background layers, but by using this technique it makes it look like there's 3 background layers, in a way that can't be reproduced by simple scanline effects.

  • @alexjones3035
    @alexjones3035 Před 4 lety +58

    Fantastic video, I absolutely loved it! I'm sure you've heard it a 1000 times before, but you really do an outstanding job on the visualizations and making the understanding intuitive. I noticed the extra sound effects, and they were great! Would love to see (hear?) more of them in the future, they really ground the visuals and help emphasis the content, like with the ticks on the IRQs or the scanning sound effect on the CRT beam.

    • @MegamanXGold
      @MegamanXGold Před 4 lety +6

      This guy right here said everything I wanted to say, but better than I would've said it. I'm surprised to see most of the comments talk about the sounds; it was the visuals that had an obvious leap. I know every video involves a lot of work, but this one sure is polished with a ton of visual sugar. Love it!

  • @SA77888
    @SA77888 Před 2 lety +3

    I think the restrictions old school consoles had, and the solutions/work-arounds that were found to deal with those restrictions, really helped give them a certain feel....you could often tell what console a game belonged to just by looking at it....so those restrictions helped give it character and spurred the creators on to be creative.

  • @poweroffriendship2.0
    @poweroffriendship2.0 Před 4 lety +27

    This pure quality content is very fascinating to watch on how the NES games are made. Talking about 8 minutes of the best "bits" (no puns intended).

  • @XanthinZarda
    @XanthinZarda Před 4 lety +40

    Those folks at Rare were always a bit extra devious; I wonder how they unlocked so many secrets of the NES?
    Addendum: I favor the sound effects, it helped me snap to focus on the element you were explaining; they were subtle enough. I'm sure there's going to be some adjustment as you go forward.

    • @KuraIthys
      @KuraIthys Před 4 lety +14

      Rare was crazy back then.
      They actually reverse engineered the Famicom and showed Nintendo a demo program for NES before any official dev tools ever made it out of Japan.
      There's claims that they understood the hardware better than Nintendo themselves did, and that this so impressed Nintendo that this is why they were doing things like Donkey Kong Country and the like on SNES, and how they ended up being so dominant on the n64...
      They figured all of this out basically with no documentation...

    • @XanthinZarda
      @XanthinZarda Před 4 lety +5

      @@KuraIthys Applause to them, but I wonder if they had any luck with the Mega Drive; to my understanding the documentation for the GEMS engine was _infamously_ poorly documented.

    • @kellymountain
      @kellymountain Před rokem

      @@XanthinZarda gems isn't the only sound driver for the genesis

  • @trap0xf
    @trap0xf Před 4 lety +2

    I always assumed these games with "mid-screen" parallax were all using CHR-RAM to achieve their effect, using CHR-ROM banking didn't even come to mind. Pretty clever trick for sure. Love how well-packed Metal Storm's CHR-ROM banks look.

    • @cardboardbox_tech
      @cardboardbox_tech Před 4 lety

      ...Can't say anything good about the rest of Metal Storm's graphics though...
      Bad, bad color choices! It's like staring at boiling puke!

  • @kevinfishburne
    @kevinfishburne Před 4 lety +8

    The old way of programming games-basically coming up with new hacks to project the appearance of more detailed graphics and mechanics-is harder, but gives each game a unique feel (even if the game itself may have sucked). Actual 3D asset management and display is in a way easier than "fake 3D" render logic (Pole Position, After Burner, Super Castlevania IV). Imagine a modern fake 3D game like Galaxy Force II or OutRun but with millions of super-scalar sprites and no texture filtering for maximum crunchyness at 2160p 240fps with VR headset and steering wheel with pedals. The pixels would stay square individually even as you rotated the headset, like tiny solid-color billboards! We need more new games that use old render logic to leverage modern GPU parallel processing, for fun at least.

  • @RoyHess666
    @RoyHess666 Před 4 lety +2

    Programmers back in the old days were genies, finding such efficient and optimal solutions for the limited 6502 hardware in the NES!!!

  • @NoScopeNizzle95
    @NoScopeNizzle95 Před 4 lety +1

    Honestly, I've never really been able to understand anything in these videos but it's still interesting to watch.

  • @paulstelian97
    @paulstelian97 Před 4 lety +7

    You and Ben Eater posting within a few minutes of each other... WHAT A TREAT!

  • @MarioFanGamer659
    @MarioFanGamer659 Před 4 lety +4

    Man, I really like how you have added those little details in the video, be it the electron gun animation or those sound effects (especially for those who think RGME's videos are too quiet).
    Wikipedia has listed four types of parallax scrolling: Multiple background layers, objects/ sprites, repeating graphics and raster effects. The former two are self-explainatory (and also are related in a certain sense) but the latter two, those explained effects, that's where people without knowledge on how the NES or CRT work might get trouble without a visual representation. Sure, there are some troublesome parts but since I'm fairly knowledgible, that's difficult for me to judge. But explaining that you just change the scrolling in the middle of the screen or change the graphics for the background is farily understandable, especially with the visual clue. Good job!

  • @warmCabin
    @warmCabin Před 2 lety +1

    Mega Man 2 has a couple of funny parallax techniques you didn't cover! The iconic title screen uses sprites for the little windows on the building which move faster than the actual background (the building itself has a vertically invariant texture). Then, once the purple skyline is completely scrolled off screen, the scroll speeds up for the roof to come on screen.
    More "axis-invariant" textures are used to give some of the full screen bosses a floor underneath as well.
    On the menu screens, they use an 8x8 tile repeating pattern under the text boxes. Rather than do any CHR RAM shenanigans, they simply scroll the screen 8 pixels per frame to create the illusion that the background pattern isn't moving.

  • @danielstephenson7558
    @danielstephenson7558 Před 4 lety +5

    Man, these techniques of memory swapping are insane.

  • @jess648
    @jess648 Před 4 lety +1

    the creativity of developers on systems where memory was limited is amazing

  • @TheAgentAPM
    @TheAgentAPM Před 4 lety +51

    One of the most amazing parallax I've ever seen on the NES hardware is Cossack Fortress 4 from RockMan 4 Minus Infinity:
    czcams.com/video/CipwPaJOF3c/video.html
    It involves really convincing and clever masking of tile swapping, and smart usage of objects to draw the level layout.

    • @OllAxe
      @OllAxe Před 4 lety +14

      Omg that's so clever! Took me a good minute to figure out how they achieved it. They use two entirely different tricks at different points in that "screen" of the level, first one being standard mid-frame scrolling and the second being an insane fusion of sprites representing platforms, graphics swap on a tightly repeating pattern, a completely different scrolling routine and sprites to mask the seams, using a full frame of that tightly repeating pattern to switch between the two tricks. Holy mother of god that's dedication

    • @danielfinley-pesti6661
      @danielfinley-pesti6661 Před 4 lety +1

      OllAxe hey 👋

    • @MarioFanGamer659
      @MarioFanGamer659 Před 3 lety +2

      ​@@OllAxe Same. Using raster interrupts and object platforms is nothing special (you can even see that they spawn onscreen) but it's really the transition where you had to take a close look at the HP bar and notice that it goes behind the edges which implies objects.

    • @OllAxe
      @OllAxe Před 3 lety +1

      @@MarioFanGamer659 Oh wow I didn't even notice that! Good eye!

  • @DogsRNice
    @DogsRNice Před 4 lety +2

    Very clever using the sound of slow scan television for the sound of the electron gun

  • @strat5520
    @strat5520 Před 2 lety +1

    Dude, your production is awesome. The way you visualize the ram data in real time and show the permutations thru loops is absolutely amazing. I bet OG SNES Devs would have KILLED for your videos when they were starting out!

  • @OllAxe
    @OllAxe Před 4 lety +4

    I love this channel so much
    Also really enjoyed the addition of authentic-sounding NES sound effects

  • @r.g.thesecond
    @r.g.thesecond Před 4 měsíci

    This is a video I watch every time I try coding for the NES. Thank you!

  • @JohnGabrielUk
    @JohnGabrielUk Před 4 lety +1

    You've stepped up your game on the presentation! The sound effects here are a nice touch. Enjoyed the video, as always.

  • @ItsPripp
    @ItsPripp Před 4 lety

    Great sound work in this video. Your visual effects were already top notch, and these great sound effects lend another layer of quality to your work! Keep it up!

  • @WickedSushi
    @WickedSushi Před 4 lety

    The video editing makes these videos super enjoyable (along with the information and calm presentation, of course!).

  • @spartonberry
    @spartonberry Před 4 lety +4

    3:39 "but never vertically" I suppose it's not exactly that but I read the MMC2 (used in Punch-Out!!) and MMC4 (in the Fire Emblem games and Famicom Wars) reserved two key tile IDs to swap between two pre-stored CHR ROM banks as those tiles were rendered.
    I know for the Fire Emblem was they stored the top and bottom window borders in multiple ROM banks but then when the left and right side border tiles (which used the two key tile IDs) were drawn, it would effectively, when loading the left side, swap to the CHR ROM bank with the font to draw text boxes and then swap back to the gameplay tiles when it reached the right side of the window.
    Not familiar enough with Punch-Out to know how it used it, but I can probably guess the large animated opponents probably had a part. :)

  • @ChannelSho
    @ChannelSho Před 4 lety +1

    And here I thought the strange flickering of the background in Volkmire's Inferno of Battletoads was just a neat thing the developers put in.

  • @bisquick3662
    @bisquick3662 Před 4 lety +1

    Your videos are really high quality, it's great that you use the time wisely and don't add unnecessary filler

  • @marcfuchs6938
    @marcfuchs6938 Před rokem

    The editing in those videos is fantastic. Great content.

  • @SeranaKnight
    @SeranaKnight Před rokem

    Sounds like someone's character is getting new perks with the sound fx, love the video

  • @xeostube
    @xeostube Před 2 lety

    fantastic explanation; even though I'd already seen all these tricks explained elsewhere your high production values and great visualizations made it totally worth watching.

  • @SvetiMFNikola
    @SvetiMFNikola Před 3 lety +1

    Big big respect for people back than who programed games in limited hardware...

  • @VinsCool
    @VinsCool Před 4 lety

    The addition of sound effects was a nice touch! Great video as always

  • @lyradawn4176
    @lyradawn4176 Před 4 lety

    i was totally not understanding until the visuals for the memory came in, top notch editing! thanks for the explaination!

  • @hokostudios
    @hokostudios Před 4 lety +2

    Oh, this is super neat! I never actually had very many games for the NES, so I don't think I got to experience any of these effects back in the day.
    Kind of curious what the sprite zero hit function is. I knew about a couple of the other simple tricks highlighted here, but I don't think I've ever heard mention of that one.

  • @allluckyseven
    @allluckyseven Před 4 lety

    I love it when you make NES-related videos, and this is an amazing one, thank you!

  • @CoOlKiD473
    @CoOlKiD473 Před 4 lety

    Y’all really upped the ante on these videos, already great videos are looking even better!

  • @Domarius64
    @Domarius64 Před 3 lety

    That was incredible. Thank you for explaining so clearly, with very informative animations!

  • @sagacious03
    @sagacious03 Před 4 lety

    Neat explanation! Thanks for uploading! I like the sound editing!

  • @InsaneFirebat
    @InsaneFirebat Před 4 lety

    Very nice explaination and visuals. I love learning about the techniques game devs used to workaround ancient hardware limitations.

  • @franchisethebull
    @franchisethebull Před 4 lety

    Learned like 30 things in 20 seconds around the two minute mark, instant sub

  • @blayral
    @blayral Před 4 lety

    i wish there were more detailled channels like yours about how older systems are working, as for the hardware than for the software. if some one knows more channel as good as this one... Great job, thanks so much for all thoses insights on system of my youth.

  • @Malzzzy
    @Malzzzy Před 4 lety

    Great editing and explanation!

  • @starfrost6816
    @starfrost6816 Před 4 lety +4

    As a programmer I envy these people, they must have been amazing programmers

    • @KiroOsexXIII
      @KiroOsexXIII Před 2 lety

      As a programmer I'm really glad that I don't have to work in assembly.

    • @thezipcreator
      @thezipcreator Před rokem

      @@KiroOsexXIII honestly, 6502 assembly isn't that bad once you get used to it. x86 assembly on the other hand, that's a fucking nightmare

  • @GarryDumblowski
    @GarryDumblowski Před 3 lety

    I don't think I ever noticed just how beautiful of a game Battletoads was until I watched this video.

  • @andrewradu9884
    @andrewradu9884 Před 3 lety

    I love that these videos are so interesting and entertaining they must take a lot of time and effort

  • @3Dparallax
    @3Dparallax Před 4 lety

    Top notch video as always, will check out that new support platform.

  • @WrinkleRelease
    @WrinkleRelease Před 4 lety

    I've never understand a single thing in any of these videos, but I love watching them anyway. The obvious take-away is that coders for the NES were wickedly clever.

  • @DigitalConceptz
    @DigitalConceptz Před 4 lety +4

    Very fascinating!! I’m intrigued like a mofoneed to watch videos like these, sir that’s why I’m subscribed to you, yeah-yeah games are fun but always wanted to know what makes. These old school games tick

  • @BagOfMagicFood
    @BagOfMagicFood Před 3 lety +1

    Another famous game with the bank-swapping tile trick is MegaMan 5 in its GravityMan stage. Looking at the PPU, there are many tiles that change all the time: the glowing lights, the electric arcs, the barber-pole-striped spikes, the random numbers... But when you get to a certain part of the stage, these tiles suddenly stop and only change when you scroll the screen, and this is where you see rows of girders that appear to scroll behind other background elements, because their tiles are updated with different alignments via the same series of banks as those animated elements. When you're in the rooms with the animations, a PPU Viewer shows you that girder rotating constantly.
    Have you covered NES games that change the scroll amount one scanline at a time, like the Horizontal Oscillation from EarthBound 2? I suspect this is how MegaMan 6 achieves the "heat wave" distortion effect on its sunset in TomahawkMan's stage, since if you look at the Name Table, that sun remains perfectly round the whole time, and I don't see such odd edge shapes in the tiles. In the game Fire Hawk, you can see that at a certain point, each line of the ground scrolls a little more slowly than the line below it to produce a 3D camera effect on the whole. And now I recall that the bootleg port of Contra 3 to NES used the horizontal oscillation effect up the entire screen for its intro!

  • @noaht2005
    @noaht2005 Před 4 měsíci

    the combination of both techniques in sword master looks amazing

  • @_polpon
    @_polpon Před 4 lety

    Really nice video :), nice to see NES mechanics explained :)

  • @MaximumADHD
    @MaximumADHD Před 4 lety

    Fantastic as always :D

  • @captainnintendo
    @captainnintendo Před 4 lety +1

    Interesting stuff.
    I was kinda hoping to see an example of the sunset from the first level in Rygar that has mountain scrolling in from of it but I'm guessing that's probably sprites doing that.

  • @CyberneticSheep
    @CyberneticSheep Před 3 lety +2

    Its no wonder companies back then needed whole teams to figure all this stuff out. Really logical magic work

  • @marcelbonatelli
    @marcelbonatelli Před 4 lety

    Love your videos!!! Thanks so much!!

  • @ghb323
    @ghb323 Před 4 lety

    Awsome explanation, by the way.

  • @Komagb
    @Komagb Před 4 lety

    Very nice, thank you!

  • @IngwiePhoenix
    @IngwiePhoenix Před 4 lety

    Dude, the animations in this video are off the charts. Amazing stuff right then and there!
    I am currently thinking of how to best extract resources off a GBA rom that I dumped and while the GBA is obviously a different console, I can't help but still notice that a few things stuck - patterns, so to say. This is seriously an amazing channel and I learn so much from it. Thank you very much for sharing this wonderful knowledge and putting all of those effords into every single detail - from the live memory map updates, to the CRT animations to just...well, everything. It is gorgeous and thoughtfuly put together. Definitively amazing!

    • @KuraIthys
      @KuraIthys Před 4 lety

      There's a fair bit of overlap.
      Once you start digging you see a whole series of techniques and concepts that are widely applicable to a large number of 8 and 16 bit consoles and microcomputers.
      Everything from the atari 800 to the NES to the sinclair spectrum to the TurbographX 16 - they all have their own quirks, but a lot of concepts and basic features apply to all of them.
      And the GBA, while technically of another era (it has 32 bit instructions available, for one), is very much like someone took the Super Nintendo design, expanded it (with things like more video memory, 15 bit bitmap modes, and mode 7 style effects on multiple background layers at once, alongside regular background layers as well), simplified it (there's far fewer graphics modes or mutually exclusive features), and tweaked it to work as a handheld...
      There's a reason that system got so many SNES ports;
      It certainly isn't a SNES in any direct sense, but it's lineage is pretty clear nonetheless...

  • @Nicholas_Steel
    @Nicholas_Steel Před 4 lety

    Very informative, thanks.

  • @thatwasprettyneat
    @thatwasprettyneat Před 4 lety

    you kinda lost me around the halfway mark, but i'll watch this again tomorrow. this is fascinating, thanks for uploading!

  • @byf1987
    @byf1987 Před 4 lety

    Five months ago, I asked this under the Q & A video: "I would be interested to learn something about the limitation of consoles (e.g. SS can't handle transparency, how SS lose to PS in its 3D performance), and how some games overcame that limitation (e.g. by adding chip on cartridge for NES, and adding RAM cartridge for SS)"
    This video is the thing I am looking for! Awesome and many thanks!

  • @wolcamophone4783
    @wolcamophone4783 Před 4 lety

    I always love seeing how the camera isn’t actually moving, it’s just the background. Really goes to show what kind of cool mind bending stuff happens with some areas of primitive forced creativity.

  • @chainedlupine
    @chainedlupine Před 4 lety +1

    Ooh, keen. See, I assumed games like Metal Storm were using extra hardware to write to some on-cart RAM region for the PPU tile updates, but a ginormous amount of ROM banks work just as well. Learned something new!

  • @jasonpawloski
    @jasonpawloski Před 4 lety

    Love your videos!

  • @Weyzar
    @Weyzar Před 4 lety +41

    Heres a suggestion:
    Can you explain why the game genie code YEAAAA causes super mario bros to bug the hell out?

    • @Selicre
      @Selicre Před 4 lety +28

      Easy, it changes one of the VRAM buffer offsets and causes the game to write to unintended portions of the game's memory. This code corresponds to writing 07 to address 8080, corresponding to VRAM_Buffer_Offset in the disassembly.
      The result as far as I can tell is that the game misunderstands its own PPU upload queue.
      Edit: misunderstood a few things, oops.

    • @wishusknight3009
      @wishusknight3009 Před 4 lety +11

      in this case, "yeaaaa" may not be referring to a happy endorsement, but may actually be screaming.

    • @Weyzar
      @Weyzar Před 4 lety +5

      @@Selicre Thank you man, really informative, but it would be nice to see retro game mechanics actually use some of his good and neat animations and explanations to this topic.

    • @Selicre
      @Selicre Před 4 lety +6

      @@Weyzar I might try my hand at making some videos like that when I have the time.

    • @RandomPerson964
      @RandomPerson964 Před 4 lety +6

      That sounds like the kind of thing he would spend a minute or two explaining in a Q&A video. If he ever does another one, ask him then.

  • @guillermoleon0216
    @guillermoleon0216 Před 4 lety +1

    Old school game devs were BEASTS

  • @redgrain3914
    @redgrain3914 Před 3 lety

    It's amazing how the sound and tile movement effects you do here help me, a giant math idiot, understand what my Nintendo is doing. Keep doing this stuff.

  • @Voultar
    @Voultar Před 4 lety

    I greatly enjoy this channel.
    Greatly..

  • @opensauce04
    @opensauce04 Před rokem

    Loved the sound effects

  • @Sinn0100
    @Sinn0100 Před 3 lety

    You have yourself a new subscriber!

  • @darkwraithcovenantindustries

    It's just incredible that they pulled this off with so little resources available to them hardware wise. These coders were true geniuses.

  • @plazmacube6167
    @plazmacube6167 Před 4 lety +2

    Wow! That's so cool!

  • @mrburns366
    @mrburns366 Před 4 lety

    very interesting! I can't quite wrap my brain around it.. but it's very interesting. Time for a refresher on IRQs i think.

    • @mrmimeisfunny
      @mrmimeisfunny Před 4 lety

      IRQs are just like function calls inserted mid code. So they interrupt whatever is running when a certain pin on the cartridge is energized. Therefore it is possible to make a system that energizes that IRQ pin when a certain part of the graphics data is requested (which corresponds with a certain part of the screen being drawn), and quickly change some registers to snap the background to the right place.

  • @sweetamiao
    @sweetamiao Před 4 lety +1

    Wonderful job! Would definitely like to see some video regarding how Sega MD/Genesis achieved some incredible effects when the console doesn't have anything like SNES Mode 7 in the future.

  • @supernunb3128
    @supernunb3128 Před 4 lety +1

    Nice sound effects!

  • @VoidHalo
    @VoidHalo Před 2 lety

    I don't know if you have yet or not, but I would absolutely LOVE to see you cover the different mapper chips/chipsets that were used for the NES to achieve things like extended memory, or being able to scroll X and Y in SMB3. At least the common mappers, anyways. I'm not sure how many there were, but with the unlicensed games there were probably tons.

  • @MaidenHell1977
    @MaidenHell1977 Před 4 lety

    Amazing. You are the best.

  • @DeadTalkLive
    @DeadTalkLive Před 3 lety

    Great video 👍! As a current CZcamsr, I am contantly searching for new ideas! Nice Job!

  • @timmowarner
    @timmowarner Před 4 lety

    30 years later I discover the scrolling backgrounds were far more complex than I ever thought as a kid where I explained it as "Cool! They make the backgrounds scroll at different speeds to make them look more 3D!"

  • @bobbybobbinson
    @bobbybobbinson Před 3 lety +1

    parallax looks really good on nes games

  • @ExpressoTheCat
    @ExpressoTheCat Před 3 lety +1

    i never knew that the nes could do pallarax, thats so cool!

    • @johneygd
      @johneygd Před 3 lety +1

      The nes turns out to be waaay more weaker then i,ve ever could imagine, those first generation nes games really looked ,played and sounded limited , they did feel more like enhanced atari 2600 games, HOWEVER, with the advent of mappers,the nes could do soooo much much more,by increasing it’s ram & rom space, while bankswitching allows to bigger rom size games, heck it’s even possible to hijack the nes ppu and pump rendered graphics to it, it’s just mind blowing how those final nes games lloked,play and sounded like early 16bit games.

  • @elixirgames819
    @elixirgames819 Před 4 lety

    amazingly awesome channel

  • @lagcom
    @lagcom Před 4 lety

    I was not expecting a video on Sunday, but then maybe it’s Saturday for you

  • @pasu2k
    @pasu2k Před 4 lety

    Nice, looks like I was right on the pixel preview on Twitter ;D

  • @czlowiekokap
    @czlowiekokap Před 3 lety

    As always I've learned something new

  • @imalsoTOMATO
    @imalsoTOMATO Před 3 lety

    Super fascinating what developers pulled off in the NES' later lifecycle. The games looked brilliant

  • @ghb323
    @ghb323 Před 4 lety +1

    The only limitation is that your background, other than drawing the screen scanline-based is that your background repeats very frequently.

  • @marscaleb
    @marscaleb Před 4 lety

    Another great example of bank swapping to mimic scrolling layers: Batman Return of the Joker.
    In the opening stage they have a cloud pattern that constantly scrolls by the screen, and as you approach the first building you can see the scrolling effect get interrupted right int he middle of the screen, even without the player moving.

  • @noahthompson95
    @noahthompson95 Před 4 lety +1

    Been waiting for the third AV effects video! Already loving it!
    A question - how do beat 'em up arcade games like Streets of Rage know which attacks connect and which don't? It's definitely not sprite collision, since you can whiff something if you're behind someone even if your punch goes through their sprite. I've always wondered this and would love an explanation!
    also really impressed by how smooth that mech's animation is in metal storm

    • @nikolaikalashnikov4253
      @nikolaikalashnikov4253 Před 3 lety

      Good question: Along the same lines, I'm curious how romhackers can modify the levels & hit detection still works flawlessly ?
      ...like the simple scenario of standing on a ledge VS falling into a pit to your death (for platformers).
      ...for this, it might actually be "sprite detection" (i.e. the mathematically equivalent check on objects in memory) ?

  • @akalyx
    @akalyx Před 4 lety

    amazing, thanks

  • @Bugrim
    @Bugrim Před rokem

    Шикарное ролик, с понятным объяснением, жаль не так много игр это использовали.

  • @chillbro1010
    @chillbro1010 Před 3 lety +1

    It just clicked... This is genius.