Comment by woolion

11 hours ago

I was personally put off by the fact that the MegaDrive limitations actually negatively impact the gameplay, while there are little gains that I see in that "limited space fostering creativity" that you would expect from the pitch. In particular, there are bullet visibility issues (see the Electric Underground's review [0] for a more detailed analysis) which I think show how the console limitations would need a much deeper mastery to properly support such modern game design thinking.

However, "a Mega Drive game!" is a great sales point to the majority of people invested in the nostalgia market, with only a surface-level interest of what these games are. It's why it made it to the font page of hn, and not it's perfect 'traditional' sprite art, or its Yuzo Koshiro soundtrack.

I like shmups because they are pretty much "pure game design"; games are such a complete package of story, interactive experience, etc that it's hard to separate what comes from where. This is what makes design experimentation so interesting and rich.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELcS_IyXygs&t=2788s

11 comments

woolion

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hnlmorg  9 hours ago

I cannot comment because why this made it to the front page, but new releases are still common for retro consoles. In fact you’d be surprised just how many games are still released for the 8 and 16 bit era machines.

MrBuddyCasino  11 hours ago

I was always put off by the color palette of the Mega Drive. Every game looks a little sad and drab compared to the SNES or NeoGeo.

  • Lerc  3 hours ago

    Are you judging by experiencing them on a CRT, or from modern displays? The range of colours was certainty broad enough, but I agree that the screenshots tend to look a bit bland. I wonder how much this came down to variance of the video signal at the analog stage. You had knobs for brightness, contrast, and saturation instead of the digital tweaking you have now. Perhaps it is that the color representation of live video has improved so that the knob level adjustment isn't needed anymore, but the output of the old consoles were tuned that level of adjustment people used to use to make the original video look nomal.

  • prmoustache  2 hours ago

    I don't know I liked how each video game console at the time had its own audio and graphical signature. We were a Sega house but we enjoyed swapping our console for a few months with the SNES or PC Engine of friends/cousins and I think they liked it too.

    It might have more to do with the game studios ecosystem more than technicalities given some games were ported on all 3 consoles with only minor differencies though.

    I would describe both the audio and graphical signature of the megadrive as "Metalic" (a bit amiga 500 like but with FM sounds instead of samples) while the SNES one was more childish/cartoony (same as subsequent consoles from the brand really) and the pc engine one had more flat[1] graphics but more saturated/rock'n'roll sound signature.

    [1] probably because it was halfway inbetween the sega master system and megadrive/snes in term of gfx capabilities.

  • simondotau  10 hours ago

    Specifically the SMD global palette had limitations around desaturated/pastel colours, with choice in saturated colours. And with no sprite blending, opportunities for subtle tones are further limited.