The completely underappreciated possibilities of Mode 0 on SNES. . . .

So, I was [very roughly] messing about and trying to see how close I could get to matching one of the boss battles from Shinobi III on Genesis by using only two of the four available background layers in SNES’ Mode 0 (it’s actually the underground boss at the end of Round 3, which the video should automatically jump to), and it turns out that the SNES can get pretty dang close indeed:

Here’s how it looks in the Genesis original (the boss uses one background layer and the actual background the other):

376765784_Round3boss.png.19fcb23c21e212c22a84f4dcf658ee2f.png

And here’s how it would look if it were done in Mode 0 on SNES (the boss uses one background layer and the actual background another):

621461153_ShinobiIIIMode0.png.bc710f858c5e22a6b074c5470a84bf56.png

The kinda amazing observation here being that I would then still have every single sprite and two full backgrounds spare on SNES to do whatever the hell I want with them. That’s just bonkers when you think about what that means in terms of how much more you can add to a scene like this just by taking full advantage of the four full backgrounds that are available in Mode 0 on SNES. I mean, I could literally have three huge bosses that size on-screen at once on SNES and still have every single sprite spare, plus I could even make one of them a semi-transparent ghost version using the SNES’ colour math capability if I liked too. :-o

Edit: Here’s a couple of other examples too:

Here’s those three huge bosses I was talking about:

Edit 2: Well, I just added a fourth boss:

Edit 3: Actually, make that six bosses:

Edit 4: I swear this is the last one in this boss series:

But here’s a different one just for fun too:

And one more since I’m here (which could pushed even further still):

It’s crazy that, given the many possibilities, almost no one has really tried to push Mode 0 to its limits thus far.

Note: I used this awesome little tool created by Rilden from the SNESdev forums to reduce the colours to work/fit within the limitations of SNES’ Mode 0: https://rilden.github.io/tiledpalettequant/

4 thoughts on “The completely underappreciated possibilities of Mode 0 on SNES. . . .”

  2. I couldn’t find an email contact for you so thought I’d post here and hope you see it. I just came across a Youtube comment you made on Coding Secret’s “SNES hardware beaten by this simple Amiga trick” This led me to your Youtube channel and I was impressed with the Mode 0 demos you’ve done and glad to have finally found someone else passionate about 3+ layers of parallax scrolling. I’m not sure how familiar you are with the Amiga as that is my true love but wanted to know if you’ve seen the Amiga 500 games Agony and Ork that do 3 layers of scrolling. I personally think Agony is the most beautiful 16 bit game ever. Here is a longplay:

    Dual playfield mode on the Amiga uses 6 bitplanes split into 3 and 3 but what they did here was split again the back 3 into 2 and 1 and then made the last 1 bitplane static and only 1 colour but then also used the copper chip for more colors to shine through. There is a great explanation here https://codetapper.com/amiga/sprite-tricks/agony/

    Here is Ork with 3 layers and the farthest layer also scrolls.

    Also a few Amiga games have used sprites to mimic three layers like Mr Nutz such as at 1:24:41 here https://youtu.be/7GHoqRscnOk?t=5081 or the recent game Inviyya at say 3:06 here https://youtu.be/mrUem1eHfak

    These are all done on 1985 hardware. What is exciting to me is how untapped these elements are on the Amiga like you also feel about the SNES. I started a thread about it here https://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=115927 thinking about what else could be done and furthering the bitplane technique they confirmed it would be possible to do 4 layers like Mode 0 by splitting the bitplanes 2,1,2,1 so it would be 3 color, 1 color, 3 color, 1 color taking transparency into mind and being able to add more colors with the copper and sprites. On AGA Amigas it should be possible to split the 8 bitplanes into 3,1,3,1 or 2,2,2,2. A few good recent examples of pushing AGA can be found here in Reshoot R at say 14:07 here https://youtu.be/BIFQSYWWE_k?t=847 or the sequel Reshoot Proxima 3 at 1:44 here https://youtu.be/YSzIuWmjzjY?t=104 which also uses sprites for the 3rd layer.

    So the possibilities are very exciting with Mode 0 and also with the bitplane splits on the Amiga. Since the Amiga can also do sprite multiplexing like Leander then theoretically the Amiga could beat the SNES and have 4 layers of scrolling +1 sprite level so 5 altogether! 🙂

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  3. Lots of cool stuff can definitely be done on Amiga.

    Also, the SNES can display four full-screen fully-overlapping 2bpp backgrounds of 24 colours each in Mode 0, so 96 colours on backgrounds alone, and before any HDMA colour gradients or transparency effects for far more colours. SNES also has the same ability to use sprites to fake another background layer too, for the same total of five that you mentioned should be possible on Amiga. And the sprites on SNES are 4bpp and have an additional 120 15-bit colours all of their own too. That makes for a total of 216 colours on-screen in Mode 0 on SNES before any HDMA colour gradients or transparency effects are applied. Additionally, SNES has the ability to create two window masks that can cut shapes out any/all of the backgrounds and sprites to fake another two simple background layers/objects via various methods of using the backdrop colour or the colour window as well. So, it’s actually technically possible to display seven fully-overlapping “background” layers this way on SNES, with the likes of layer priority switching and row/line scrolling creating the illusion of even more parallax on top of that as well. It’s crazy just how much can be squeezed out of the system.

    Such is the power of Colour Blasting on SNES.

    So, yeah, lots of great stuff is possible there on both systems.

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